Kris: Dragonfire
by Byakko
Summary: Alexander Brockett didn't know what to expect when he rescued a mysterious experimental girl from the Tylon labs, Kris, the Red Dragon. Chap. 8 UP! Tiger in a China shop! you know who I mean And Kris deals serious punishment on the annoying...
1. Sidequest

ZLF Sidequest 

**Author's Note:** Um, well, my first Bloody Roar fic. Heh, and unfortunately, it has SELF-MADE characters, which EVERYONE hates. But bare with it, I'll of course introduce the original characters from BR through the course of the story. And also note that my writing skills are any but good so bare with it, pls?

P.S This is set when Tylon was destroyed by the ZLF back in Bloody Roar 2.

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"Xan!" the baboon zoanthrope raised his head, sniffing the air with sensitive nostrils. Prying information from the scorching heat around them. Tylon was going up in flames and the Zoanthrope Liberation Front were going through the wreck of Tylon, saving any trapped zoanthropes and killing cruel scientists. 

"Wind due north..." said the baboon, eyes narrowing as his brain made sense of the burning aroma.

"Scent...smell of dirt! Head for the southern warehouse, go down, some of us are still down there!" ordered the baboon, instructing his partner.

"Gotcha, Tean!" replied Xan, running towards the collasping warehouse.

"Damnit, Xan! Transform already!" snarled Tean, turning around to other areas.

"You don't show ya butt to me, Tean!" laughed Xan, "I'll transform when I need to, no worries about it, Tean!"

The light-haired young man, in a white sleeveless singlet and blue pants charged into the inferno, dodging helter skelter from falling debri and burning computers.

The smell of over-burnt flesh and fur met his nose.

"Ah..." growled Xan, shielding his nose and his eyes, "Too late up here..."

Jumping over a support beam, Xan finally found the elevator shaft, empty, with the crushed elevator itself at the bottom. Burning metal and rubber straps, almost overpowering for Xan but he gritted his teeth and jumped towards the elevator straps.

Swinging down as fast as he could, he reached the next level and and swung in.

"Thank God! The fire hasn't spread here!" Xan exclaimed, wiping his sweat that thundered down his forehead like a waterfall. He could sense it, many pairs, or more, of eyes, peering at him from the dead cages in the lower level of the laboratory.

"...help..."

"...what's happening...I hear so many things up there..."

"You're not one of 'em scientists...right? Right? RIGHT?! RIGHT?!"

'Bloody hell...some of 'em gone nuts...' Xan thought to himself, walking down the aisles of cages and cells, looking at the experimented zoanthropes and humans, half formed or worse.

"...save us...please..." gasped an old man, half-formed with an ape, stretching out a grizzled hand through the bars.

"That's what I'm here to do, don't ya worry..." comforted Zan, holding the hand.

"...I'm not like the others. This ape half of mine is calm and well. I'm old, I won't last this night, not without my drugs or medicine," said the old man softly, gripping Xan's hand, pulling him close to the bars.

"No way! You'll be fine! I'll just transform and get you guys out of here!" cried Xan, "I'm from the ZLF! We're the good guys! We're help you!"

The slumped and hunched figure shook his head and continued softly, "There is no help...for us...men and animal, were never meant to be simply fused on a whim. Nature governs that...not men..." the old man started to lie down on the cold floor of his cell slowly, his apish face weary and wrinkled from age and tiredness.

"Hey, don't give up..." Xan tried to pull the shivering man towards the cell bars, tried to bring him close to his youthful warmth.

"I'm not giving up. I have no more life left to give up...Boy!" with a surge of effort, the old man sat bolt up and grabbed Xan's head from behind the bars.

"If you must save someone, boy, save the one down the hall, twenty paces fast..." gasped the man, then his grip loosened and he collasped on the cell ground, weezing with short breaths.

"But you! And the others!"

"Don't...prelong their lives...suffering...the one...she isn't man-ma..." the man stopped twitching and his large, doleful eyes, stared and reflected the gray ceiling.

Xan became alone, alone except for the furious and crazed howls from the people in the cells and cages, claws stuck through the bars and formed a moving, killing corridor.

Xan stumbled backed away from the old sage's cell, and into the powerful arms of some maddened subject.

The log-like arms choked back on Xan's neck, crushing his head against the thick iron bars, the sound of an animal growling and laughing, the smell of rotting flesh between its teeth, it drove Xan to rage...

"RRWAARR!" he roared as he transformed, burning the creature that tried to keep him captive. It cowered from the bright light and the pain, not daring to peer through the bars again as the transformation completed in seconds.

Xan stood on his powerful clawed feet that had destroyed his shoes. His chest stretched his shirt, that was usually comfortably loose and free. His neck rippled with lean muscles, his arms rivaled that of the creature before. His spine had extended into a stiff tail, with two brown stripes near its base. His face had lengthened into a wolf-like (note wolf-LIKE) snout and two large ears. His fur was light coffee brown (or for Singaporeans, like teh-tarik :)) and there were another two brown stripes on his back.

Xan, the Tylacine, surveyed the imtimidated corridor once more, though perhaps, it has become less than imtimidating. The creatures, hearing his roar, and smelling the predatorial scent about him, retreated to the far corners of their cells and whimpered.

With heavy strides, Xan stalked down the single path, sniffing the air for anything strange, ears pricked for murmurings from the darkness, eyes piercing the deep and claws poised, waiting.

Counting, Xan calculated that though he wasn't going quickly, 13 strides would be about the same as a man brisk-walking and did a countdown.

However, Xan didn't need to go the full 13, by the 8th, he saw.

A transparent, glass-like column, filled with a pale, glowing liquid. A girl, with long black hair that grew from her head and low on her neck, like a mane, was floating within it, attached to cruel and hurtful tubes that spun to the top or bottom of the column. Held in the middle of the deadly mesh, air was given to her through a mask over her mouth. Alone and naked, an over-grown child within a machinical womb.

With a quick lunge of anger, Xan slashed at the column repeatedly. Though his sharp claws left marks, the column stood. Pounching backwards on his hunches, Xan ran forward and leaped in a powerful pounce and spread his arms outward. As his arms are around the column, he slammed them together, crushing the glass between. The liquid gushed forth through the rapidly widenning cracks and Xan lunged back as the column collasped into a myriad of light. The girl flopped down but hung painfully from the tubes. With quick slashes, Xan cut them and the girl fell gently into his warm chest.

"Hey, are you alright? Wake up...come on!" said Xan softly, a hand gently tapping the girl's face.

"Uh..." the girl slowly opened her eyes, tiny slits that peered around blurly.

The girl turned to face the pointed nose of Xan, peering innocently with his marsupian eyes, a deep chocolate brown. Immediately, she began to struggle out of the beastman's grasp, whimpering and dotting low growls, like a frightened animal. She pulled and knocked backwards into Xan's hard chest and then slammed forwards. For a small girl, she was exceptionally strong, strong enough to knock the wind slightly out of his chest.

"WOAH! Hey, kid! STOP IT!" yelled Xan, trying to pin the girl down onto the wet floor with his body. But that made the girl paniced even more.

"WRA!" the girl grabbed her assailant's arm and bit down hard, unusually sharp fingernails digging in the growingly red flesh around the puncture.

"GOD DAMNNIT GIRL!" roared Xan, tossing his arm up in pain, with the girl still hanging on.

By instinct, he swung his injured arm around, with one mighty swing, the girl went flying and slammed into some computers. Her eyes shut silent, with a last soft growl in her breath, the girl slumped to the ground and lay there unconcious.

"SHIT!" Xan spat, checking his bleeding arm and quickly going to the girl's side.

"What the hell..." Xan took a closer look and his throat rumbled in displeasure, "These puncture marks...only two deep ones...like fangs, animal canine fangs. And these claw marks too...too deep for a human..." he continued to think as he kneeled by the girl's side and checked her pulse. Some blood ran down the back of her head, and some of his trickled down her jaw and...

"Claws!" he quickly raised one of the girl's hands. Besides the irremovable metal rings around each of her fingers and thumb, there was another abnormality to her fingers. Her fingers had lengthened beyond normal length, they ended in full flesh stumps instead of the top being with a fingernail. But, from those tips, animalistic claws, talons, extended forth. Not all were like the fully extended ones, some were in the middle of the formation, being sharp points with skin stretched over them.

"Tylon...what the freaking hell have you done to this girl..." he growled angrily, his tongue flicked between his teeth.

Immediately, he saw other strange features of the girl he couldn't see before within the tank. Along her her arms and even her body, scales grew, baige, skin covered scales that nearly completely blended in with her skin, as there were a handful and widely spaced. Along her back, small forming nobs grew along her spine. Her toes were almost like her hands, though they were not so extreme and looked simply that she had sharp nails. checking her teeth, Xan saw her two long canines surrounded by her human teeth. Even her nostrils were a bit malformed and her ears were long at the points. Her long black hair was truly a mane, growing on the whole back of her neck instead of stopping just at the start of the neck.

"Not man-made? Old man, how could she be anything else..."

Suddenly, a loud explosion shook the foundations and underground chambers of the lab. Xan's nose was raised in the air, taking in large streams of air, sensitive nerves deciphering the melee of smells. His ears pricked up, focusing into cups and swiveling around to catch any other, quieter noises.

He detected a distant scent of smoke and got up in haste.

BOOM!

Another blast, one that blast right across the cells down the hallway, the bright light briefly illuminated the wide pupils of maddened, frightened cage beastmen that squawked and raced within their small confines.

"Come on, we've gotta get out here one way or another..." he gathered the naked girl in his arms and raced back down the hallway, the smoke and burning ash stinging his face as he charged through, his ears filled with all the howls and plaintive cries of those he left behidn to roast and burn within their metal prisons. Lest any of them cried out in pain in words, Xan could only charge ever forward with his head bent low.

Arriving at the elevator shaft, Xan howled in anger and disappointment. The shaft shone with flames, their tongues surged and boiled from below like some unearthly gate way to Hell.

"What do we do now...noway up, nothing!"

Large booming creaks and and slams from above distracted Xan. Just as he peered up, the floor gave way. As concrete and wood tumbled down, Xan snarled savagely and curled into a ball with the girl within the middle, protected. As the debri finally reached his floor, he felt the heavy and shocking pain as the support beam slammed onto his arched back, forcing it down arkwardly and crushing him and the girl beneath.

The flames pushed further in to their level. Xan, losing so much energy from the collaspe, transformed back in his weaker human form, and immediately felt the pressure of the beam increased nearly thrice fold. With a last ditch effort, he pushed the girl from beneath him to clear ground, just before he himself flattened onto the ground from the pressure and, as smoke flowed in wide strands, the world became dark.


	2. The Hatching

Ku Draca 

**Author's Note:** Yee! Got reviews :) And even from Tiger5913!! I haven't stopped reading your fics, I still love 'em! (see my Favourite Stories and Authors) The things is, fics have been slow in the Bloody Roar section so I never really came back here to read fics anymore. School will be ending next week so I have a lot of free time, and decided to start on this fanfic which I have been thinking about for a long time. So anyway, thanks to NeoDragonZero and Tiger5913 for your reviews :)

P.S Tiger5913, just what is a Mary Sue @_@?

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The girl woke to the strong stench of burning flesh and chemical flames. Her eyes sprang open, bright gold with raptor pupils. She sat up into a crouch and peered in desperation at the fiery chaos around her. Frightened, she was an animal in a wildfire. Only danger and heat surrounded her as she scuttled back and forth in a bid to find some, some escape!

"Aaaa..."

The girl turned swiftly, her claws were poised and her fangs bared for what creature made that sound. Alas, all she saw was a young man, injured and broken beneath a large beam. She had failed to notice him before, her sense of smell was clouded by the smoke around them.

She sniffed him derisively, inspected the beam and snuffed as she processed her thoughts in her part beast mind. Then, she realised, that she herself had his scent. On her body and she murmured on why. She remembered faintly, through painful memories, of her few aware times within that glass prison. And of the excruciating pain when electricity was sent through the liquid around her, attracted straight to her fingers with their metal rings. And of the many jabs from electronic appendages within the prison, how her body was forced to change, often painful, often long. How her there were implantations on her neck. She felt along her neck, feeling the hair or fur that grew so long there. All her memories, were filled with pain, and horror. Somewhere in her mind, she had no doubt she was human once, but she had no recollection of when that was.

None.

But now, she was free. Free to roam, to stand once more. To breathe pure air, even if it was clouded by burning ash. But why? How?

Strange, how the most recent happenings seemed to slip her mind. She thought hard and remembered how she woke up to see the beast atop her. And how she attacked it, but was dispatched of later by a swing and crash. Where was the beast now? A faint replica of his scent came from the man, a bit different, but nonetheless similar.

Gingerly, she picked up an arm and saw, wounds from her attack. She once again snuffed, so this was her rescuer, or assailant...

She paced around the beam, the danger of the situation momentarily leaving her mind as she comtemplated on this man, who was also a beast...why did that sound so familiar?

--->

"She's a most interesting experiment...but why such a young girl?"

"Beast transformation comes about with puberty, gentlemen. Not to mention, she's a pretty thing to see everyday, hm? Makes me feel all tingling, especially dow-"

"Dr Busuzima, we are here to inspect the extent of the research, NOT to listen to your sexual fantasies,"

"Ah yes, too bad that! As you can see, the DNA splicing has been a most delightful success! Note that her skin has started to become scale-like! That's the most recent transformation and so, isn't very complete yet. HOWEVER! We are pleased to inform you she is accepting all the...'rogue DNA' and the cell's are mutiplying generously!"

"This had better not be another 'Uriko', Busuzima..."

"Ha ha! No worries gentlemen! None...at...all..."

"What's with all this attention, some new guinea pig to toy with and all the boys want to play..."

"Ah! Shenlong, sir!"

"Well? What's with this girl?"

"An artificial zoanthrope like this is hard to make, you see,"

"Not to mention barbaric..."

"What was that, Stephan old boy? Surely, you're not getting a soft...heart now, are ye? Stopping the splicing now will do no good too, hm? Sure, she'll be alive but have reversed bones and failing organs. Maybe a few seizures and vomiting and hermoraging thrown in to our little mix. But oh! She'll be free, and happy while she slowly dies! How delightful!"

"Shut up Busuzima,"

"Hmph! I was serious about that, you know! Anyway, gentlemen, as you see, we are about to inject the bat DNA now! And of course, our daily shock therapy,"

"I understand the bat wings, however, why the electricity?"

"Well, my fine sir, heh heh, we can't expect ALL the cells to jolt awake when she goes through puberty, can we? No no! Absolutely not, never! In your own best interests, for the sake of ensuring quality goods, we are throwing in our patented electrical 'bath' sessions for free! To give that little boost on those cells!"

"Won't she get damaged?"

"Nah! She's been here for over a year and she doesn't look worse for wear! Don't worry, gentlemen! If this dragon fails to hatch, fry it, and get another batch..."

"Busuzima, I'm starting to wonder which of you is the beast, she or you..."

"BOSS! You're just as bad as Stephan, no fun whatsoever!"

Kris shook her head. She hated them, those voices. Voices had to come from somewhere, she knew, and when she found that one, maybe even the other one as well, she'll hunt them, kill them, make them hurt...

"YRAWR!" she yelped as a huge surge of flames burst from the elevator door towards them, the heat blast pushing back towards the beam. The flash fire dissipated but the flames returned a split second later, with terrifying groans, boulders of concrete crumbled from the ceiling.

The beam Xan was under caught fire and he awoke blurly, coughed and hacked and tried to pull away with all his might. But he collasped again, looking up with his face dark with soot, he saw the questioning and desperate face of the girl.

'She doesn't...know...what to do...and I don't...either...' he thought, reaching out with one of his hands to grasp the girls arm.

"UNH!" she tried to pull away in surprised and lept back. only to jump into encroaching flames.

"Girl...try to...I don't know, just get out..."

Xan fainted again and the girl stared at the hand around her small arm, feeling through her sensitive skin the failing pulse of this man whom she didn't know.

"Die..."

She thought she felt this before, a long time ago. She forgot when, or what it was, but she remembered something else.

She felt sad. Sad, whatever it was, it wasn't nice. She felt...not good. But what was it? That memory, that feeling? Why couldn't she remembered? What was she? She felt like she used to be like this man, no, she knew she was, is, was like this man. Like him, human, weak and...not like her. Died, all the humans around her...died.

"Nome...no..." it was the first word she had said since her imprisonment, and the last word she said before she was taken away.

"Nome...home, I want to stay home, I don't want to go!" she cried.

The building above started to fall in upon itself, dust and small pieces of metal roof fell through, down to where she and Xan lay.

"I don't want to die!" she roared, her face was slashed and burned by cinders and sharp metal pieces that fluttered down, a calm wind before the storm.

"I want to hunt! I want to fight! I want to kill!" she started to salivate, it wasn't by intention, it was just like that. Her body was responding to something. Her pupils became slits and dilated open and then shrunk again alternately. Her mane flew about, energy was building inside her and her ears pricked. She stood up on her two legs, but as if she wasn't accustomed to it, she stood as if on platforms, or stilts. Her back arched and the nobs begin to throb, and seemed to grow biggger.

"I...I...wa...wa..wra...RWAR!"

A huge metal siding came tumbling down through the levels, hitting one side first...

"Rrr..." she looked up, her mane flew around her like tendrils.

It hit the other level...

Her mouth opened in a full frontal snarl, her large canine teeth dripping red from being pressed into her lower gums...

It came down to their level, right atop of Xan and the girl.

"AAAAAAAAWAAARRR!" she roared, suddenly surrounded by a powerful aura, it burst from her and dented the metal siding into a harmless ball, the flames were quenched around her as powerful gusts of wind blew away from her.

Her mane flew around her, trickling down her back, along her spine. Her back arched tightly, her feet choked the ground, her arms fell to the ground, the metal rings pressing into them more painfully then ever before, her mouth locked open, dripping, her eyes stretched open by an unseen force, sweat flowed about her body like a waterfall, from the heat around her, and the heat within her.

The transformation was not instantneous, it was slow and painful. Her nose and mouth lengthened, the jaws were pulled long, the skin was taut over the oversized fangs that had replaced her human teeth. The teeth were so large, that they hung out of the jaw. Her nostrils were pushed to the sides, became holes of dark abysses that breathed in great amounts of air at a breath. A horn pushed itself out on top of her mawl, it was nestled between the two nostrils and would have shone bright white, if not for the tendrils of blood and flesh on it from being freshly borned.

Her eyes were pushed to an odd angle between in front and to the side, they increased in size and replaced her more human-like eyes with full raptor eyes, transparent as if newly hatched. Her ears were forced atop her head and spread like fans, with some fur touching the top and along the back of it, blending in with the fully fledged scales that armoured her skin. Goat-like horns pulled themselves from her skull, through the flesh, skin to the outside. Like her horn, the antlers had small pieces of flesh hanging from them.

Her lower jaw was rounded with extra skin, very much like a chameleon's. The neck was bullish, thick and packed with power. It was a foot long and was graced with a black mane around the base of the neck. Her scaled head blended into the black fur and hair as the head became neck.

Her shoulders were pulled wide, and thick with muscle and thick bone. Her arms were as thick and long as logs, scaled, with full taloned claws at the end, the metal rings pressed deeply into the them, making them bleed. Thin, extra bone with skin stretched over them pulled from the main trunk of the arm and spread out wide. Leathery skin grew from them, spreading across them like a canvas, connecting back to the side of her body, becoming huge pair of wing-like structures.

Her chest had become heavily muscled and wide, armoured by a thick hide and carapace. Her back was slight arched, spikes grew from the nobs before, piercing through her back like spires. Her spine lengthened as well, pulling apart from the body and growing thick and strewn with muscle. The same combination of scale and carapace and fur covered it as it thrashed about on its own accord, knocking away whole concrete blocks with ease.

Her thighs thickened and moved to become more at the side of the body, They became like those of a dinosaur, bent from her sudden great weight. Her feet more than doubled in size, the toes spread out and the talons left marks on the concrete floor.

Standing tall and overwhelming, the creature breathed in torrents of air at a breath and let loose with earthshaking roar. It was part screech, part roar and the beast repeated it over and over again. It's skin was colourless, transparent. It flickered from sight to camouflaged, reflecting the crimson flames around it. It screeched as the heat bombarded its new, fresh body, scorching the hardening scales and fur red. Only its black mane was spared.

It hutched around clumsily, unused and misproportioned limbs were to account for it. It's oversized teeth hurt its own jaw and it growled and snarled in frustration. A rumbling form deep within its stomach made it even more unruly. As a burst of methane was produced out of its mouth, it open its jaws and the friction between its large teeth set off a spark.

A wave of flame surged forth, adding to the hell around it. But its flame took away oxygen and the surrounding flames were a moment quenched. Its mouth did not hurt, the insides were protected with heavy hide and armour. It sniffed the fresher air and noticed a new smell. It looked down from its tremendous height and spotted another creature, underneath a fallen debri.

Recollection brought the girl back from her rage, if only a bit. She snarled and swung at the beam with her whiplash tail, knocking it into the hungry flames.

She allowed her mish mash of instincts to take over. One of the beasts that gave her wings made her spread them wide, despite the fear of the fire and sharp objects around them of tearing them to shreds. She pounded the wings, bringing a small cyclone of wind forth, pushing the flames back and pushing her upwards. She pounded harder, manuevering purely from instinct and chance. With a foot, she picked up Xan in her long talons and brought her wings forward, beating the painful air around her and angling up. Faster and faster she flapped, gaining great speed as she burst through the levels of torture of the building. Her scales were completely burned red, only her underbelly was pearly white. Even her eyes were not spared, they were deep crimson.

"SCRAAAAAAAW!" she screamed, as her nose picked up the scent of fresh air above.

Making her body as streamlined as possible, she forced her wings to beat harder until she saw the quiet night sky above.

With the burning of the inferno around her, the dragon burst out of the building in a shower of burning debri and and painful cries, her wings spread wide and to grace the cool wind above.


	3. Scourge

**Author's Note:** Urp! Sorry this chapter was delayed @_@ I've been pretty sick and alot of activities have been going around school (last week so of course, teachers want to make us suffer one last time -_-;;;) Anyway, here's the third chapter and seriously Tiger, a 35-chapter novel o_0 YOWZA! It'll take me a long time to read though...

P.S. I have made this chapter extra long a bit to make up for inactivity :)

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"What the freak?!" yelped the puffin zoanthrope.

"GANGWAY!!" roared a buffalo zoanthrope, charging away from falling debri.

"By my word, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!"

Kris the Dragon sent a powerful gust straight to the cowering zoanthropes around her, sending backwards in one fell swoop. Screeching in pain and unknown anger, she pounced out of the burning wreckage, half flapping to get clear of the building.

Tripping and tumbling on her ungainly legs, handicapped by having one holding Xan, she fell onto the cool grass, her wings crumpled to her sides and breath coming heavily as her immense chest suffered from the pressure. Steam rose around her as the cool dewdrops on the grass sizzled from her red-hot scales.

Her talons unclasped into a loose grip and Xan rolled out and away. A baboon ran to his side.

"Xan! Xan! Come on Xan!" Tean said, patting Xan's face hard but not painfully.

"Whe...wha...wha?" Xan garbled, his eyes flickering awake.

Tean pulled him up to a sitting position and Xan coughed several times, taking deep, fresh breaths while Tean began to ask questions.

"What," Tean pointed somewhat shakily, "Is that, Xan? What in the world happened down there?"

Other zoanthropes began to gather their courage again and started to go towards the strange and deadly looking red behemoth before them, with its eyes closed and its heavy breaths shaking them even from afar.

Xan shook his head and pushed away from Tean, "Long story..."

"I believe we need answers, even long ones, now Brockett," boomed a voice from behind.

"Major...sir!" Xan immediately stood as straight as he could as a large man, at least eight feet tall with thick, rippling muslces, dressed in old army uniforms, approached the scene.

Major was not his true name, but for obvious reasons, was an apt nickname. He was battle-scarred from some distant war, trained under stringent camps from some unknown time. Nonetheless, he was the undisputed leader of the zoanthropes, of the ZLF.

Besides Xan, he was the only other who was not in beast form. His own human size and apparent strength was enough to keep order.

"At ease," he replied and Xan relaxed but not much.

"This..." Xan looked behind and gasped inwardly, he had not realised what exactly happened and just assumed he was rescued by the rest. But behind him, scaled, spiked and winged, was large red...dragon!

"You don't know either, private? This...creature...flew out of the warehouse holding you,"

"Holding me..."

"Do not repeat me, private. Now, can you tell us what happened down there, what this...creature...is?" Major strained against the use of 'dragon'.

Xan stared at the dragon, his thoughts running backwards or fast forwarding in order to make sense of it all. A big red dragon out of nowhere...a dragon! A dragon! That was enough to think about alone.

But Xan saw the relation, saw something that reminded him of that girl he rescued. A black mane. Slightly scorched, but still very intact, it was thick and flowed from the head down the whole neck, like the girls. And the wings. Or claws he now saw, the wings were directly attached to the arms. The claws, fingers, with deep-set metal rings around them.

The girl...before him.

He ran excitedly to the behemoth, much to the shock and some, horror of the surrounding crowd. Major followed silently behind. He slowed as he neared and slowly placed a hand on the creatures side. The scales, skin, was warm. Very warm, abnormally so.

"She's burning up..." he said in concern as he observed the newly-transformed girl.

"Private Brockett, you are going to answer my question," it was not a question, it was a statement, one which made all uneasy as they heard the silent, biding anger within the hulk.

Xan, in his innocent concern and fondness, missed it and replied jovially and excitedly to Major.

"She was an experiment in the lab! An experimented zoanthrope! And I guess...this is her beast form!"

Tean groaned from behind at the mistake his friend made.

Major was silent, his face dark and Xan at last, felt the growing tension in the air. The other zoanthropes were pacing. It probably wasn't their intention, simply an instinct within most of their beastial sides. A beast paced only when they frightened or hungry.

"Very well, Brockett. Step back," Major ordered, moving closer to Xan and the dragon.

Xan was resolute, and merely shuffled his feet uncertainly.

"Just do it, Xan!" hissed Tean, pulling Xan along, risking Major's gaze.

But Xan stood his ground, staring up at the big man as he stood a mere two feet away from the dragon.

"What are you going to do, sir?"

Something had entered Major's eyes. Usually, they were dark, like tiny ebony stones, it gave him a 'dumb' look that hid his strategic intelligience. Now, they were glinting with a faint hint of maniacism.

The whole area was hushed, not even the true wild animals were daring to cry. Only the flames that still burned and crackled stayed, but even they were dull. The shining eyes of the ZLF watched.

"We are here to destroy all traces of Tylon, Private. Now, step aside," with that, he transformed.

Standing tall and literally overbearing, the huge brown-furred grizzly. Standing at 9 feet, the brutal looking bearman paced up the last step to the dragon in one single stride. His five-clawed paw was held high and back, muscles were framed by his glossy fur reflecting the orange fires. His claws glinted in the moon and firelight.

Her nose already twitching from the bombarding multiple scents of various animals, the light from Major's transformation finally roused the dragon to semi-wakefullness. Scarlet eyes swiveled and rolled beneath half-closed lids.

Xan tore himself away from Tean's grip and jumped in front of Major, facing the bear's huge maw.

"You can't kill her! She hasn't done anything!"

His gaze still transfixed his prey, Major boomed back, "It's not a zoanthrope. It is a mistake, a mistake that we cannot tolerate,"

Her eyes opened wide at Major's words. A...zoanthrope?

"This is murder Major!"

"Don't talk back to me, private!" roared Major, swinging his trunklike arm at Xan.

But he stopped short, Xan stared back at Major in terror, his back leaned against the dragon. Major's brutal single-mindedness made him try and try again in vain, growling as globules of saliva dripped from his jaws. Finally, with a great roar of anger his looked up at his outstretched arm, and paled.

A huge claw wrapped around Major's arm, the dragon rose, jets of hot steam shot from its large nostrils, her neck turned with thousands of black strands of fur hanging beautifully over the smooth neck. Teeth, visible out of its half-opened jaws, her eyes were a single color of crimson, narrowed at Major. Low rumbles emitted out of its throat.

Slow from pained and heated muscles, she rose first on one claw-foot, then the other. To Major, it meant only to extend his uncharateristic fright, for though she was arched, she stood a comfortable two heads taller than he did. The ZLF were at a loss and merely stood where they were, they could feel, the powerful predatorial might from the red beast, one which seared through their human-beast minds and caused only one reaction. Flee. But though they wanted to flee, fear itself also held them in place. And so, they stayed in a perpetual limbo of loss.

Xan could only hope to shrink away from between the two combatants.

Still grasping Major's arm, she kept her gaze on the bear, forcing the bearman to face her. Major felt his stomach clutch and unclutch everytime he saw her pupils dilate and shrink.

It was a standstill. A void bound in control of the dragon. And only the dragon had enough immensity and power to break it.

She felt the heat inside her, on her skin. It hardly cooled by mere dewdrops. Her blood was boiling, the feverpitch ran through and tortured her whole body at once. In that standstill, the heat grew and grew, until it reached its zenith.

"SWAAAAAAAARRRAAAAA!" she roared from pain and rage, flinging Major like some ragdoll to the side. He flew for a distance before finally slamming into the ground. His chest was crushed and his ribs broke. His arm was twisted beyond repair and blood dribbled from his mouth.

In that instant of break, all hell literally broke loose. The zoanthropes cried and ran in all directions, Xan ducked as the red dragon lept clear over him and pounced onto Major. Crushing him under her ton weight, she gripped his throat in one claw and constricted it to a fraction of its original thickness. She raised him and threw him down again, her slew of instincts presented her with different methods to kill and she was unable to choose.

Through all this, Major still lived, if only on the brink of death. He opened his eyes in a cloud of pain and dellusion, to stare in helplessness at the red terror over him.

"Get up! What the hell have you done!" yelled Tean, shaking his friend from his stupor and carrying him up.

Xan could not answer, he merely stared, like many others whose fear left them, at the certain death of their leader.

Suddenly, a clear bolt of instinct rose from the rest of the battling instincts within the dragon. She would not know then, but the instinct was specially designed for her, to use her most powerful and unworldly weapon.

A deep rumble from inside her boiling stomach, she faced down at Major. Methane burst forth from her throat to her jaw, she opened it, big teeth rubbed against each other for just one spark.

Major last sight was that of the flames of hell, engulfing him in a whirlwind of pain and destruction. His head was consumed before he could utter a scream.

And those who saw, saw for what the dragon was. A red terror, a red destruction, a fiery scourge to spread its flames to burn.


	4. Busuzima's Baby

**Author's Notes:** OOOOOOIIIIEEEEeeeee!!!!! I'm sorry for not posting for so long! I'm sorry I didn't uphold my role as an author and note wait for my readers to die before posting another chapter! I'm sorry I took the last eclair! I'm sorry I didn't pratice my piano! I'm sorry...

...

Okay, now that's out of my system, I can continue.

Sorry for being so late with this chapter, I currently am busy with all sorts of h/w and stuff so I didn't have the time to continue. That, and I had writer's block for a while. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. I tried to add in more detail this time, and hopefully, it'll be better than my last chapter.

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Lifting her head up from the smoking, charred carcass, the dragon's movements were slow and deliberate. Her long neck arched back slowly, gleaming scales slid over each other in slow motion, gleaming with dancing lights. Muscles flowed unhindered as the beast pushed itself up onto its compounded backlegs heavily, its arms hung freely and its tail twisted in a semicircle gently but tautly.

Her eyes were closed, and her breath, despite the previous violence, was slow and leisurely, as if she was wallowing in something pleasurable, comfortable, something that didn't calm her nerves, but gave her control. Total control. It was 'control' in the strangest sense. She wasn't given control, or the control was merely a superficial thing. She felt being controlled, being given guidance, and relishing the moment of calm given to her.

In the far reaches of her mind, behind the animalistic implanted instincts and fears, what was left of her rational human mind comtemplated the fact she had killed and burned a man, bear, bearman.

But then, she realised another thing.

She didn't care. Not a bit. She herself has suffered, a sense of apathy was a result. She had to survive, and if she could destroy things that made threatened her, all the better.

---------

Within that aura of comfort, she failed to notice just what came of the ripples she had made, in the pool of the ZLF.

"...Boshcof...ze big lizzaard..."

"Don't say it, Loir..." grunted the rhino zoanthrope, presently in human form and fingering his armed bazooka furtively.

"...Boshcof...ze big lizzzaard juzt blew...faaai-re..."

"Like, I told you, don't say it Loir," he grunted back, lifting up the heavy artillery onto his shoulders. With quick, nimble movements unsuspected from such rough fingers.

Peering from the shadows of the nearby woods, the pair were just two of many zoanthropes that had decided to turn tail...some literally. The French zoanthrope, having already reverted to his fox form, jittered nervously in the brush as his partner busied with aiming.

"Ve should leaaaave...now, Boshcof...NOW..."

Boshcof didn't reply, sweat gathered on his thick brow, and flowed down his fire-tanned skin. Peering through his sights, he targeted the unknowing dragon quickly, his hands shaking as he tried to steady his target.

Loir crossed his arms and tapped his fingers impatiently against his arm. Finally, impatient and frightened of the prospect of being toasted, he hit Boshcof on the shoulder, "We leave or ZAAAI!"

"LOIR!!!" shouted the huge man as he accidentally let fly a shot from his bazooka. 

It veered off too much, and did not set course for the dragon's head as Boshcof had wanted. But it still headed in the general direction, and though it missed the head, it struck something almost as bad. 

The bullet shot right through the top cartilage of the dragon's left wing, bringing with it pieces of the black-red leathery skin in a flurry of thin blood rain. 

"SKEEE-WAAAAAAAAAAARRGGH!" she roared as her unguarded wing was made lame in a second. Pain shot through her back worse than her fiery breath as with every tiny movement the wounded wing made, fresh bloody pumped out uselessly and ridged cartliage grated against each other. And this compounded and ochestrated unbelievable agony. 

The dragon reared and roared, unable to realise the source of its frustration was her own movement, instincts forced her broken wing to flap and it hung on what splintered ends were left of the skin. The dragon was dancing, a dance of fury and torture, as unable to stop the pain, it turned back to the fiery world that was before it. Its blood boiled again, serving as a numbing effect on the much more defined feelings of pain, her anger was a quick remedy, and she would do anything to fuel it on. 

Her head roamed in tense jerks, sighting potential prey and targets. The ZLFs were disorganized and panicking, like frightened deer to a lion. The dragon charged at those closest and the results were devastating. 

The other zoanthrope soldiers had seen the power of the dragon's breath, but they had totally disregarded what she could do with her mere physical gifts. She charged in like a crazed rhino, her large head and blade-like horn speared any unfortunate in her path, her bullish neck flexed easilly to fling them clear overhead, crushing themselves in a hurtling pitfall. Those too large and stayed speared on were guranteed a ride, the dragon would toss her head viciously and wild abandon to force the foreign objects off. Often, her blade horn would rip asunder the stomach, chest, innards, until the victim was just a sack of pulverized meat that slipped down in a bloody mess. 

Those that did not get speared instead faced a far more varied fate. Her jaws would clamp on a frighten or stunned foe, crush the head, or if she got a deeper hold, would toss them like unwanted ragdolls every which way, or plant them on the ground and pressed her huge feet on one end, and just yank upwards. 

Her arms bested even a mighty buffalo zoanthrope who tried to face up to her. She crushed his arms backwards with a sickening crunch as the bones were pushed too far, and she would pull apart or crushed the creature together. She somehow did not forget how to fight like a human, and often punched those big enough, or squashed those small enough. Both types had the same fate, a short but violent death. 

Even those behind, who have gotten too close, were not spared. Her tree trunk tail made shortwork of ribs, heads, legs alike, and all done without her even trying. 

Almost the entire of her was drenched in sticky blood, they only heightened her senses and deepened her colouration. Her claws dripped scarlet blood on her tracks, her scales were deepening to a dark rouge, and if she the urge, she would let fly her trademark flamejets, that illuminated her crazed face, the eyes were hungry with an insatiable appetite, and yet she killed without provokation or prejudice. She was not a predator, she was a hunter-killer, worse by far. Her being was one of crimson, so much so that it created a faint and primal aura around her that awoke the deepest fears within man and beasts, not of self-preservation but the full-fledged realization of total annihilation. 

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Many many steps away, a scientist chuckled to himself at the sight of the carnage. The chameleon zoanthrope blended in with just a slight shimmer to show his location. Even then, he was a master of disguise and escapism, if not for the bodyshaking of the laugh, he would have been totally undetectable. 

"My my! My little baby's all grown up and killing for herself!" mused the crazed Vidal Sasoon reject as he returned to his human form. 

"Oh boo hoo! She came out a tad too early maybe, but she's still a beaut!" laughed the fanatical scientist as he put down whatever he had managed to salvage from his now destroyed lab. Cages empty or filled with mutilated and whimpering animals, serums of various colours, documents, files were among the salvage, and Busuzima quickly piled them into his jeep in waiting, hidden amidst some bushes. 

"Ack! That babe's making such a noise," he said to himself as he delved into the back of his jeep headfirst. 

"She ain't ready for the big world, ma! Gotta give her shots before something nasty gets inside!" he laughed in lunatic banter as he re-emerged with a large shotgun. 

Fishing amongst stoppled tubes, he produced a blue-liquid filled injection, which he loaded into what was actually, a rather large dart gun. 

"Time for shots, before she burns up on me like an engine on the fritz!" Busizima chattered as he jumped into his jeep and started the engine to life, laughing like a maniac as he sped off with the dart gun on his shoulder. 

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The ZLF may be full of ruffians and thugs as some might say, but their Major was a true army officer, and after the initial panic, some like Boshcof had immobilized their artillery. Those far enough loaded various firearms and fired at will, shotguns, handguns, semi-automatic machine guns, everything added to the medley. The dragon was hit from all sides with unexpectation, and she doubled back, faced with an inkling of fear. 

Around and around she twisted, trying to fend off stray bullets, most hit her ironhide, but her face and wings were being battered. Her right wing was able to finally fold in completely, but her left wing hung like some neglected child, and was riddled with bullet holes, thin threads of skin gave way and her wing was all but beyond repair. 

She could not see as her hands blocked bullets from her vulnerable eyes, but her fallen wing made her unsteady, and she toppled about, unable to get her barings. 

Finally, she blew flames at will, the bright flashes shielded her for brief moments as her attackers were blinded. But even that was not enough. She had been pushed into a corner of the field, blocked on both sides by sturdy trees that in her anxiety, she had no opportunity to break through. Her wing was useless without the other and she found herself grounded, weakened, being beaten back with no way to retaliate, and no escape. It would be a matter of minutes, before a stray bullet would just hit her head enough, or get lucky and hit a soft spot, and that would be the end. 

Pain and fury once again reigned in her mind. Whatever fear she had was being made into that fiery, boiling sensation within her blood. There was no outlet for her unbridled energy, her blood was heating up too much, burning her up alive. She had a disadvantage over those zoanthropes she killed. Her whole body was engineered to kill and destroy, and her makers had seen it fit to add in a control for her. 

She could not sweat, could not cool her own body temperature naturally, and the increasing heat of her blood was killing her more than the bullets. The methane producing in her stomach was one outlet, but it was not enough, not in these kind of situations. She spewed continuous jets, and her body used her heat to produce more, but it simply was not enough. The heat clouded her senses, her mind, soon she would fall and not have the resources to get back up. Of all things, she could not outlast them. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Busuzima was well-aware of his creation's limitation, and he patted his trust dartgun to fix the problem. He stopped at the edge of the firing zone, tutting at his creation's distressed, "Pitiful! Pitiful! What would you do without your mummy, Crimson, what would you do!?" he muttered, dubbing his own pet name for the dragon. Even if he had the slightest courtesy to use the creature's actual name, she had long forgotten it. 

He aimed his dartgun, centering the target, and shot the fated missle towards the dragon. 

A stray bullet hit the dart straight through, but it was quite close to the dragon already and still puntured into it, its sharp needle point finding a soft spot between the scales. 

"Phew! That was risky, lucky I got...LUCKY! HA AHA HA HA HA!" Busuzima laughed hysterically. 

The injection emptied into the dragon's bloodstream, but the stray bullet had left a hole, the dosage was only at half the optimum level. However, it was enough for the dragon to feel its effects. The organic coolant spread through her system in seconds, dispersing the intense heat that threatened to consume her before. However, she felt residue heat, not all of it was dispersed, just enough not to kill her. 

The dragon was tired, very tired, and toppled down on its knees in a groan. The bullets momentarily lessened as they saw the dragon kneel over. Then, she fell flat down, turning back into human form as she hit the ground. 

A small, thin girl, naked and helpless, lay in the flattened grasses made by her own dragon's feet. 

Slowly, the ZLF started to come out of the cover of forest and approached the hunter-killer cautiously. Some still wondering where the dragon had gone. 

"Eeep! Noway, eh eh! No gets to see MY baby except MOI!" sneered Busuzima in his manner of anger and kicked the life back into the jeep, speeding and careening wildly, startling some nervous zoanthropes back into hiding. 

He laughed all the way until he screeched to a halt, grabbed the girl and tossed her amongst the cargo and hit reverse. It was too late when the ZLFers regained some of their composure to try to halt Busuzima, but he had found a forest path meant for trucks and whatever vehicle of Tylon's to go through, and was already on his way. 


	5. Rocky Derby

**Author's Notes:** Okay, hope you didn't wait too long for this chapter. It's hard to have fanfic-writing time, what with school homework backlog and the SARS outbreak over here. Anyway, I seriously, desperately need more information on Bloody Roar 3 and Primal Fury. Not for now, the story's still developing, I've got bigger plans you see :) Hope you don't mind, because apparently, this fic will be centered on Kris, though a lot of the original characters are playing a part, big parts hopefully (look at Busuzima!) And since I like in character writing the best, I seriously really need info on all the characters and stories after BR2, because I, unfortunately, can't afford anything beyond a PS and that's it. Therefore, I'm relying on FAQ info and some unreliable info from friends with the game. 

The bottomline is, I REALLY some of you guys out there to send me info, as in-depth as you possibly can! Especially on the Sign, the Tabula of a Thousand Beasts, Xion, Long, Uranus, Kakkeru (I mean Kenji, according to my Jap speaking friend, Kenji is really Kakkeru, but the English version turned him into Kenji. It's not that I don't like Kenji, but I find Kakkeru cooler-sounding), King Orion, Chronos and what the hell is happening in this Zoanthrope nation, because I have no idea how a nation came about ANYWAY and stuff like that. 

So, please be kind, SEND ME INFORMATION! Thank you, enjoy :) 

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"Hee hee hee! I may have lost our 'glorious leader', that insolent Shenlong whose brains were a mockery, and even my precious assassin Bakuryu, but you make up for ten times their worth, dearie. Hee hee hee!" 

It was dark, or else Busuzima might have noticed two shadows that had stolen away from the smoking remains of Tylon's laboratories. They had stayed away from the fighting as best they could, and followed the escapees of ZLF. Tean and Xan were a lot wiser than to stay and put up some bravado, dragon or no dragon, they realised the ZLF just was not as good as they thought. Tean had some misgivings, but Xan was determined to leave right then and there. Although he did try to think of ways to help the girl, but as Tean said, "She's a freaking nine feet tall red dragon, with really big horns, really big teeth, really big claws, and is tearing up the guys like she's having Arts & Crafts and YOU want to HELP her ESCAPE from WHAT?!" 

Xan had to admit, he had a good point, so they ran with the rest, but kept an eye on their backs as well. They also stayed close to the road, since Tean also figured that if the dragon got serious on chasing, she would chase the rest in the forest first and if they coasted the road, they could hop to the other side. 

Then, they heard the sound of a car coming, headlights bright and some seriously crazy laughter coming at them fast. 

"Car? Probably some Tylon guy," said Xan, looking behind him. 

"Yeah, and we probably could use a ride. Ready?" asked the African-American man. 

"Ready," affirmed Xan, transforming into his Tylacine beast form. 

Tean followed suit but stopped and prepared for a pounce at the side of the dirt road, hidden beneath the brush. Xan ran out to the middle of the road and stared at the advancing headlights, growling. 

"WOAH DOGGY!" yelped Busuzima as his sandal feet scrambled about, accidentally hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes. Or, he may have really wanted to step on the accelerator, he didn't really care if the dog became an omelette anyway. 

Xan snarled savagely and sprang up high, swung his arms backwards over his head, electromagnetic energy coalaesced (OC: Note that I have this theory, that bio electromagnetism plays a key part in activating beast transformation powers. Simply said, more rage = more adrenaline in your blood = more electromagnetic waves being passed about through your body. Enough of the electromagnetism is gathered and you transform as your beast genes are activated by the spare power. Therefore, Guard Break moves are really using on that stored and continually producing electromagnetic power to produce a powerful shockwave on your target.) in his closed fists. The jeep was just beneath him as he swung down hard, slamming his Guard Break move down on the hood. The jeep screeched to halt as Xan pressed down on the front, the back tipped up violently, sending Busuzima's face straight into the windscreen, and the unconcious girl slamming into the front seats like a ragdoll. 

"XAN! The IDEA was to secure us a RIDE, NOT DESTROY IT!" roared Tean as he sprang out of the underbrush, his face was a look of contempt on his marsupial friend, as he approached the jeep and lifted the hood. 

"How did you think I was going to get this idiot to stop?!" retorted Xan in a gruff as he turned to the front seat. 

Busuzima had slid down the windscreen, his saliva leaving a clear trail, and seemed somewhat bewildered by the whole situation. First, dogman in front, then, dogman coming closer very very quickly, then, big band and windscreen, in pain. 

But Xan's comment made him wake up immediately, and made him very, very, angry. 

Busuzima sprang out of the jeep and glared at the Tylacine with sheer madness, "IDIOT!? IDIOT! IDIOT?! I'll show you 'idiot', you whelping pup! Noone insults MY genius and leaves without a manicure, that is, DIE! HA HA HA HA!" 

Xan's tylacine face screwed up in confusion, his eyebrow cocked, "THIS is genius?!" 

"YOU MISERABLE LITTLE MONGREL! PREPARE TO BE NEUTERED!" laughed Busuzima maniacally as he transformed straight into his chameleon form. 

"Another zoanthrope?" queried Tean as he lifted up the hood of the jeep and fiddled with the engine, "Deal with him while I try to fix this thing," 

"You don't have to tell ME that!" yelled Xan as he dodged out of the way of Busuzima's headbutt. 

"GRAW!" cried out Busuzima, whose lizard beast form was not suited for talking in human tongue. He struck out with a clawed punch, using his elongated arms to attack Xan from a distance. 

"Ergg!" Xan growled as he was sucker-punched repeatedly, but kept his ground and blocked Busuzima's kicking. 

"Here's something you should know, iguana man," snarled Xan as he drew back a clenched fist, "I'm a tylancine, a Tasmian Tiger to you, mate!" he guard-breaked through Busuzima's hasty light guard and proceeded to deliver his Dustdevil Combo, first punching hard into Busuzima's face, then while he clutched his face in pain, delivered a heavy punch in the gut, and slashed him with powerful claw slashes upwards, sending him spinning into the air. With great swiftness, Xan swung around in a anothre guard-breaking roundhouse kick, slamming Busuzima into a tree. 

"Tasmian Tiger's AREN'T dogs in the slightest, lizardo," grinned Xan. 

"Grabp!" Busuzima sprang to his feet again and looked like his was about to deliver a punch, Xan quickly prepared a defence when Busuzima suddenly disappeared. 

"What the..." Xan peered about in confusion, he felt a sudden blow of wind above him and looked up to see a shimmering outline of a figure that flickered away in a second, then... 

"GRAAW!!" roared Xan as the invisible chameleon zoanthrope delivered a full Taiman Straight Retsuden right into his back. Busuzima made no effort to pull his punches as he delivered the full force of his attack into the tylacine's back, sending him to the ground with his last punch and reappaering. 

He leered down at Xan and tried to stomp on him when he rolled away. 

"Grrraaaa..." snarled Xan as he stood up some distance away, Busuzima made strange 'grabp garbp' sounds as if he was laughing. 

With a mock punch, Busuzima disappeared again. Xan knew the trick now, and prepared himself, listening hard. 

Thankfully, he had placed himself in a position which had more moonlight, and he distinctly saw the movement of the dirt where the lizard man was walking. Suddenly, the invisible steps quickened and Xan knew he was rushing headlong into him. 

He lept and swung his leg in midair, catching Busuzima by his unseen head and once again, hit him with a guardbreak move into a nearby tree. 

Xan pounced on him with a vengence and before Busuzima could retaliate, he was treated to a flurry of powerful slashes that sent him up into the branches. 

His head slammed hard into a large branch and Busuzima fell back to earth, seemingly unconcious. 

"Hmpfg!" growled Xan, stamping his clawed foot on the chameleon's hard and pinning it to the ground. 

"Hey! We're done over here!" yelled Tean, who had returned to human form when he was fixing the engine. He flipped himself over the door and into the driver's seat, while Xan sat beside him. 

With a start, the engine roared to life and they started to rumble down the rocky dirt road. 

Unbeknowst, Busuzima had climbed back to his feet and with as much anger a chameleon can muster, charged after them with a Chameleon Rush. 

Xan snarled when he saw Busuzima in the rear view and stood up on the seat, and turned to face the back, staring as the lizardman was catching up to them. 

"This guy won't quit! Xan! You sit down now or I can't accelerate!" said Tean, as he tried to keep the jeep steady so that Xan was not risking a potential flight out of the jeep. 

But as Busuzima neared the jeep, he struck out with his lengthened arms at the rear of the jeep, knocking it about hard. 

"YAAARhhggg!" Tean did his best to keep the jeep steady, as it was forced to swerve every which way by the maddened lizardman. 

Xan clambered over to the back, and only then discovered the girl in the back seat. Unconcious, wounded and breathing hard, as if in pain. The smell of blood and sweat was slight about the girl, but made Xan winced a bit. 

But, he knew he could not bother with her just yet. Busuzima was pratically touching the jeep now, as the jeep could not gain speed with his continuous attacks. 

"GRAAAAAWW!" snarled Xan in challenge, his claws ready. 

Busuzima wagged his tongue in a mocking laugh from his oversized jaws. Suddenly, his tongue flew out at great speed and wrapped them around Xan's left arm. With a quick jerk, he pulled Xan tumbling off the vehicle and crashing into the ground. 

"Xan!" yelled Tean as he turned hard and braked with a screech. 

The tylacine beastman slowly climbed to his feet, the fall had been very sudden, and he had landed on his arm very hard. Busuzima's tongue released itself whipped about in the air to get rid of the sand and dirt stuck to it, and returned into his mouth. 

With a charge, Busuzima used his horned head to headbutt Xan off the ground, making him collaspe again. 

"Grabp! Grawabp!" he laughed in triump. 

"Shoot! That idiot..." hissed Tean, wondering about what to do. 

Busuzima noted the movement, and turned to face the jeep with a grin. 

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Tean tried to restart the jeep, but it was too late. 

Busuzima lept onto the hood and grabbed the young African man by the neck with his thick fingers, and began to crush the man to a choking death. 

Unable to transform for the moment, Tean struggled to pry the fingers off, but to no avail. A normal human simply could not defeat a beast man, even one that was just a chameleon. 

Xan had gotten back on his feet after being beaten to the ground by Busuzima. His arm ache, he thought it was at least sprained or something, and his chest hurt from the headbutt. That guy was not as stupid as he looked. 

"Urg...acK...uarg!" 

Xan's canine-like eyes widened in horror as he saw his friend being crushed to a slow and painful death by the chameleon beastman. With a fresh snarl in his throat, he began to charge at the busy Busuzima, who was too absorbed to notice the tylacine was not beaten just yet. 

"GARAAAAAAAWLLL!" roared Xan, slamming the large green lizard clear off the jeep, smashing a part of the glass screen in the process. His fists slammed from the sides, crushing the chest and ribs of the lizard man. 

As they landed onto the ground, Xan rolled off and gaped his mouth wide, his claws unfurled and ready. 

Busuzima jumped to his feet and stared with as much malice as a chameleon can muster, and charged again with his Chameleon Rush. 

*Only one chance to do this...* thought Xan as he was filled with a powerful energy, and caught the charging Busuzima in his Beast Drive. 

Powerful shockwaves radiated from Xan, sending a huge plume of dust and dirt up around them, almost completely concealing them within this tornado of earth. 

Busuzima found himself caught in the middle of this tornado, and is suddenly hit from all sides as Xan, hidden within this twister, attacked him with maniac speed and alacrity. First were punches and kicks, then came shining slashes that threw him high in the air and with a huge leap, Xan appeared in the middle and jumped straight up, slamming those two claws, now surrounded and lengthened by the powers of the beast within him, straigth through Busuzima's body, impaling him as they landed back on earth, and then pulling them apart outwards, lashing Busuzima's body even more. 

As Xan's beast drive, Tasmanian Devil, ended, it was enough to send Busuzima back into his human form, completely defeated this time. 

Xam sighed with relief, and walked back to the jeep now in his human form, nursing a sprained arm. 

"Are you okay Tean?" 

"Yeah, just sore on the neck. Nice going there," commented Tean as he rubbed his bruised neck with one hand, and started the jeep with the other. 

"No problem," replied Xan, sitting in the passenger seat. 

The jeep started and they again drove down the rough pathway through the forest, bumping every now and then on a large rock or pithole. The constant bumping made Xan nervous and he voiced his concerns to Tean, "Tean, can't you drive any better?" 

"Blame the road not me, my friend," he replied simply. 

Xan sighed and threw his arm back onto the headrest as he tried to make himself comfortable. Suddenly, his fingers came in contact with something cold and he shot his hand back in shock. Turning to look behind him, Xan saw the girl which he had forgotten after the fight. 

"Hey, Tean, we have an extra passenger behind here," Xan said as he pulled himself over to the back and peered at the person. 

"Whaddya know! It's the girl I rescued back in the lab!" he said in surprise. 

"That wouldn't be the...big, red, angry, fire-breathing dragon that we were suppose to be running from, would it..." Tean murmured slowly. 

"I guess so," Xan replied as he grabbed a large canvas covering some cages and threw it over the girl, who was shivering very badly from the cold midnight air. 

Tean was silent for awhile, and then sighed in exasperation, "Man...what've you got me into..." 


	6. First Meetings

**Author's Notes:** Ah! No new reviews :( Admittedly, that chapter wasn't my best ::starts waving arms about:: BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO BE SO MEAN!!!! BOO YOU! ::sticks tongue out:: Hmph! Anyway, I've decided to write the continuing stories as if they were the stories in Story Mode for Bloody Roar 2 and onwards. Not in writing style, but like in 'packages' and basic situations and timeline. Hope you enjoy this chap, I know it took me way too long! 

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The jeep had been thundering along for about a half hour, an hour at most. The night air just got colder and colder as the minutes passed, and Xan gripped his bare shoulders and slunk down into his chair to avoid being cut by the wind. Tean, occasionally mumbling about being stuck in a jeep with a *bleeping* T-Rex Terminator and a *bleeping* idiot of a dog. 

"Marsupial, NOT a dog," chattered Xan. 

"A freaking dog that isn't a dog..." continued Tean, muttering again under his breath. 

Silence reigned after, the forest was thinning out, and the road then felt smoother and less bumpy. They were nearing civilization, gradually. 

"What are we going to do when we reach HQ?" Xan asked. 

"I don't know...maybe that our whole squad was carved up and roasted by something. Oh! And that we have that 'something' with us! Oh, this is just magic..." replied Tean sarcastically. 

Xan stayed silent for a while, and then replied again, "Well, if our WHOLE squad is gone, then this girl wouldn't be in much trouble, would she?" 

Tean suddenly rammed the brake and the jeep lurched forward, sending Xan's head into the dashboard. 

Tean turned to his hurting friend, and said with a deep voice, "You want to keep this thing? She just destroyed our squad, she killed Major like nobody's business, and last time I looked, she took on five of our best guys and killed them all in less than a minute! And you want to 'keep' her!? She isn't a pet you moron," Tean leaned forward angrily, "As far as I'm concern, Major was better off killing her, well, if he could," 

Xan groaned from his aching head but scolded back, "I can't believe this! She's just a girl, damn it!" 

Tean looked at Xan's arm and grabbed it suddenly, he looked at the puncture marks, "SHE BIT YOU!? And you STILL want to help her!?" 

Xan whipped his arm back, "She can't even talk, give her a break! She just got frighten and bit me, okay?! The scientists were DOING something her, I hell don't know WHAT, but she was in pain, you could tell it! I mean," 

Xan turned around and pulled back the canvas a bit, "Look at her yourself! She's morphed and stuff but she's alive! I got her out, I could only get her out," 

"News flash! SHE got you out! She just flew up and tossed you on the ground," 

"See! She's got a heart, she's not totally mindless! Come on, Tean! Just let her stay with us for a while, come on! You can't kill her yourself, can you?" 

Tean sighed, "I was going to leave her, you know, just get her out of the jeep while we still can," 

"You wanted to abandon her?" 

Tean growled, "It's not like we 'adopted' her, Xan. Actually, YOU did, I'm just going to drive you to the HQ, and everything's up to you, kapeesh?" 

Xan grinned. 

"Yeah yeah, smile, you stupid poor man's dog..." 

"Marsupial," 

"IS THAT THE ONLY WORD YOU CAN SAY?!" shouted Tean as he started the jeep up again. 

The girl snuffled a bit and pulled the canvas over her again. 

-------------------------------------------

The night was still at the headquarters, which was really a rented out hostel building. Nonetheless, for the Japan Division Squad B members, this was home away from home. Of course, only two, and an extra, had come home that night. Lights, two on the second floor, a couple more in the upper levels, were turned on and filtered through thin paned windows. Those left behind were mostly the housekeeping crew, and the Recon crew. 

Tean drove the jeep along the deserted and dark street, faint light from filthy lampposts flooded down them as they parked nearby. Originally, they would've been able to enter through the gate, but as the keys were left with Major... 

Parking nearby, Xan lept out of the jeep and picked up the girl, bundled up in the large canvas sheet. 

"What do we do with the other stuff?" Xan asked. 

"Just leave it for the beggers, I don't wanna know what that lizard bastard was doing with 'em," Tean replied offhandedly, rubbing his neck. 

Xan agreed in silence, and carried the girl in his arms towards the wall surrounding the hostel. 

Tean climbed up easily enough, the wall was not too high, and stretched out his hands down to take the girl from Xan's arms. With a slight look of distrust and unsurity, Tean held as tightly on the girl as he dared and lept down from the top of the wall to the other side, Xan soon followed. 

As soon as Xan's feet reached the other side, Tean shoved the girl back into his arms, "Don't EVER make me hold her again," 

"What's with you?" Xan hissed back as they silently trudged towards the entrance to the building. 

"I got a glimpse of her in the jeep and another glimpse of her when you pulled back the covers. She ain't normal, that's an understatement. Scales, pointy ears? She's like a Gremlin or something," 

"Oh shut up! She's no Gremlin," 

"Really? You don't seem too comfortable carrying her too, you know," Tean jeered, noting that Xan kept shifting the girl about. 

"That's because my arm's hurt stupid," Xan replied. 

"Aaaah," replied Tean with realization. 

The two entered the silent building, walking into the sparse lobby with an empty receptionist desk in a corner and dead potted plants. Only one elevator was provided, and they promptly headed towards it. 

"I'm thinking you're gonna bring her to YOUR room, right?" asked Tean as he pushed the button for his level. He stayed on the third level, Xan on the fourth. 

"Yup," 

"What if she wakes up?" 

Xan was silent for a while, thinking, "Get her something warm to drink and find some clothes?" 

Tean looked at him with a dazed face, "If she was normal, yes," then he shouted, "BUT NOT WHEN SHE'S CRAZY!" 

His voice was extra loud in the confined space, and the girl stirred. Tean's eyes widened in horror and he backed away quickly, the elevator reached his floor and opened, causing him to fall backwards out of the elevator. 

With a quick mutter of, "Good luck," he dashed down the corridor. 

Xan grinned and guffled quietly, pressing the 'Close Door' button on the elevator and felt it lurch upwards. 

On his level, Xan walked towards his room and opened the door. Once inside, he locked the door and placed the girl gently on his bed. She was still pretty much unconcious, but since she was stirring, Xan assumed she was more like being asleep than anything else. 

Xan sat beside her for a while, looking at her curiously. Only part of her head was visible, revealing her jet-black and long hair. He daringly pulled back just a bit of the covers on her face and noted the sharp teeth sticking out of her mouth. He looked to his own arm and winced as he remembered how she attacked him. 

*Just, really, what am I really going to do?* he thought to himself as he got up. 

The room was really devoid of any form of luxury, typically because he was also a pretty low rank on the totem pole. All he had was a single bed, a window and a bathroom, which luckily, was at least complete with a sink, shower and toilet. He grabbed a cup near the sink and filled it up with hot water to about a third of it, and the rest with cold water. This really was not what he meant as a 'warm drink', but it was the best at short notice. Besides, it was for himself. 

While Xan was in the bathroom, the girl slowly began to stir again. 

At first, it felt like she was coming out of a cave, dark then suddenly bright. The strange thing was she had not actually opened her eyes, but the light was bright enough to filter through her eyes as bright red eyes that pierced her aching head. 

Slowly, with a soft growl in her throat, the girl pushed herself up with difficulty, from her lack of strength and from the tightly bound canvas about her. With a groan, she sat up, slumping forwards with a hand on her forehead. She felt feverish, and like her stomach was turned upside down, which for all she knew, literally happened at one point. 

"Aaaa..." she moaned again, hitting her forehead with the heel of her palm. Her headache seemed to get worse with each passing moment. 

Xan reentered the main room and turned to face what he thought would be an unconcious rescuee, but what now was a sitting up rescuee with a visible headache. 

"Yargh! Ah...um," Xan mumbled as he held his shout of surprise in check. 

The girl turned to look at him sharply, not with an expected feral-wild gaze, but more of contempt and indifference. 

She looked at the semi-empty glass in his hand and for the first time in a long while, she spoke her first full sentence, "If...*cough*...if you...don't *hack!* MIND *cough cough*," the girl stopped for a while, coughed a few more times, pounding her bare chest with loud thumps and then continued,"...could...I *cough*...have some water," she finally finished before coughing again. 

Xan was shocked at the request, until the girl peered at him curiously, causing him to gulp and reply immediately,"Sure sure! Just a minute," 

He quickly went back to the sink, poured in part hot and mostly cold water and staggered back to the main room where the girl was sitting quietly on the bed, seeming to be in deep thought. 

"Um, your water," Xan said arkwardly, the girl looked up and took the glass from Xan's slightly shaking hands. He had been talking calmly before, but he suddenly found himself lost for words, and even afraid, now that the girl was awake. 

The girl silently downed the water, licking her lips once she finished, and took in a deep breath of air. Xan almost thought she was going to breathe fire when she finally said, "Thank you," 

"Welcome," he replied meekly as he took the cup back from her and sat it down on the floor. 

The girl was silent again, her eyes closed in thought. 

*What's she thinking about?* Xan thought before he finally ventured a question, "Um, what's your name?" 

The girl seemed oblivious to the question, deep in her thoughts as she was. She was trying to remember, remember everything about herself which she seemed for the life of her, not to know at all. She was clear on several aspects, she knew she was a lab rat of sorts, she knew she was a human, 'was' that is, she knew she was a zoanthrope although she did not know where she got the term from, and that she was potentially dangerous. 

That was inferred. 

She remembered, in a thin haze, how she was overcame with a bloodlust, than the searing pain, the great pain... 

The girl winced, unknowingly baring her sharp fangs. Xan backed away with a jerk, expecting an attack. The arm with the freshly healed bit marks, was awfully close to the girl again. 

This sudden movement of the bed brought the girl back to reality. She opened her eyes and she looked at Xan with her red scarlet eyes, with predatorial slits, focused on him. 

Xan gulped. 

"I'm not...going to attack you...or eat you," she said with some difficulty, she felt a sudden dizzy spell come about and supported herself as she threatened to topple over. 

Xan only felt just a little less threatened, that was because he realised that the girl was not a mad, berserk beast like she was when she first sprang out. 

"Are you okay?" he asked as he noted the girl was about to collaspe. 

No reply was given, but the girl suddenly yelped as she felt an unexpected sting of pain as she accidentally clawed herself with her unnatural fingers. A thin trickle of blood began to seep down from a long cut on her forehead. She looked confusingly at her fingers, which seemed so new to her. 

"Yikes! Here..." Xan quickly reached for a tissue box placed on the floor, near the bed, and grabbed a wad of tissues in his hand. 

Despite his initial fear, he placed his hand on the girl's forehead to stop the bleeding, only to find just a faint smudge of blood on the tissue and seemingly freshly healed pink line on the girl's forehead. 

The girl did not notice, she just kept on staring at her hands. 

Or claws, she did not know the difference. How did she get these? These were not her hands! They were claws, and yet, not even true claws. Half-formed, uncompleted, so full of pain now that she realised they were there. The rings digging into the flesh, now scarred and warped as it healed and was injured and healed again over and over again. 

Her tongue flicked over her pointed teeth and fell over them slowly, inspecting the sharp points and curved edge meant for ripping through flesh. 

*What am I? This wasn't what I was before! But...what was I before? A zoanthrope, the word's familar, but...a zoanthrope...I'm not a zoanthrope...and not...a human?!* 

She hugged herself, her hands feeling the cruel openings and large holes, left by the injection machines and tubes, feeling too, the smooth flesh-covered scales and brown fur left behind by her false genetic heritage. 

*What am I...what am I! What am I! WHAT AM I!!* 

She screamed, or rather roared, a twisted roar of human and inhuman sounds, strangled and bestial. Her head tilted back and she shouted up to the sky that was blocked from her, her teeth bared and her hair falling all about her cascading on her shoulders and face. 

Xan fell back in terror, falling all about himself, and ultimately becoming a terrified heap at the bottom of the bed. 

Finally, the horrible sound stopped, and Xan, keeping it low at the base of the bed, half-expected the girl peering over him from the top of the bed, ready to eat him. 

Which she did, but not to eat him as he thought. The girl merely peered over the top of the bed down at Xan with a look that purely said 'what are you doing there'. 

"Get up," she said simply, pulling and shifting the canvas sheet about to stick out where hand, offering it to Xan. 

Although he could easily get up himself, he decided it would be unwise to reject the offer. 

He grasped her hand and she easily pulled him up without having to brace herself. And she really, pulled him up, Xan found himself on his feet without the slightest effort, and the girl pushing him up to allow him to balance himself easier. 

"Thanks," he said in surprise, and felt unsure whether to seat himself again on the bed, it seemed to be a bit too close to the girl than he liked. 

"Where did you find me?" 

"Huh?" 

"Where did you find me. I'm assuming that it was you who found me, I recognize your scent," 

Xan scractched his neck as he explained what happened, "Well, it's kinda complicated. I'm from a group that's dedicated to liberating zoanthropes, the Zoanthrope Liberation Front, but we're just called the ZLF. Anyway, our squad was ordered to attack this lab facility in the middle of nowhere, and I went into one of 'em and found you. And I kinda, got you out of this giant tube thing and you, um..." points to puncture marks on his arm, "Bit me," 

The girl looked closely at the arm, and pulled herself closer to it, then suddenly bit it. 

"ARGH!" Xan shouted as he pulled his arm away from the girl. 

"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!" 

The girl rubbed her mouth clean of any blood and tried to look closely at the arm again, but Xan kept going further and further back, the girl frowned, "Show me that arm, I'm not going to bite it again," 

Xan looked at her warily, still keeping a distance. 

"Show me your arm or I will pounce on you and rip it from you, understand?" 

Xan gulped and stuck his arm out gingerly, which the girl inspected and nodded, "Identical bite marks, I did bite you," 

"Why would I want to lie about something like that?!" 

The girl looked at him with a detached air, "Because there is a chance I might kill you right here and now if you hadn't been the one who helped me," 

Xan wanted to gulp again, but this time he was just too creeped out, something in the girl's eyes told him she was not kidding. 

"Continue," she ordered. 

"Right right, well, after that, I kinda...knocked you...unconcious..." the man was frightened as to whether he was risking a possible attack with such a confession, but the girl disregarded it, and looked intensely at him, waiting for him to continue. 

"Okay, and then, I tried to carry you out of there, but the fires were big in the basement, and I was trapped. In the end, something hit him, and I guess I fainted," 

Xan sighed at that point, "I can't remember what happend then, but when I came too, I was outside, and you," he looked nervously at the girl, "You, I think you transformed into your beast form, but it was, like, well," 

The girl began to growl, "Stop that incessant stuttering," 

Xan sighed again, "You were a dragon, a really big red dragon with wings and, a mane that looks kinda like your hair," he pointed to her head, "And two big horns that kinda came out like this," he stuck out his fingers behind his head to demostrate, "And another horn on your nose that looked like a rhino," 

The girl looked at him with a kind of confused and unbelieving look, "Judging from YOUR description, I look like like an idiot," 

Xan laughed a little but hurriedly continue when he notice the girl staring at him again, "I think you brought me out of that building, I don't know how, Tean said that you picked me up with your foot and flew out of the building," 

"Tean?" 

"Yeah, cause there was a whole squad there, like I said, and..." 

"Where's your squad now?" the girl asked. 

Xan stopped short and felt a bit of reality sink in. His squad, probably everyone single last one of them...they were... 

"You...killed them, most of them," he said softly. He did not want to leave, but he was torn between being hospitable, and the fact the girl was and probably still, hostile. He could run away right now, right now and get some help or a gun and shoot her dead in the head. That was what he should do...that was the protocol for intruders and such...but it was not something he COULD do. 

The girl comtemplated on those words for a while and shrugged, "Really? I must be rather powerful to do that much damage to an entire squad, or it could be you're squad was a pathetic lot in the first place," 

"Heeeeey..." Xan said disgruntledly. 

The girl sighed this time, "Ai ai...whatever. Now explain how I got here," 

"Let's see, you kinda got shot a lot when everyone else got together and fired at you, you looked like a bad way that time. But me and Tean were already running away with some of the other guys," 

"You deserted your squad?" said the girl in seeming surprise. 

"Well, yeah, it wasn't like I could do anything you know and," 

The girl laughed lightly, "You misunderstood. I wasn't reprimanding you, I was commeding you. Loyal you may not be, but at least you had some brains to preserve your own life instead of trying to resolve with bravado, a situation you can't control," 

Xan looked at her blankly. 

"You were smart to run away now go on!" the girl snapped. 

*Idiot...* she silently thought. 

"Okay, we were running near the road. Then suddenly this jeep comes along. We wanted a quicker way outta there, so we tried to hijack it. But the driver was some zoanthrope working for Tylon, a really weird zoanthrope, and he gave us a lot of trouble on the way. Lucky, I got rid of him eventually, and we kinda found you in the back," 

"And here I am now. Interesting," 

Xan shifted his feet a little. The girl was no longer paying any attention to him, and was delving into her own thoughts. 

"Um, what's your name?" 

The girl looked back at Xan, "Name?" 

"Yeah, name. You've only just started talking now. When I first saw you, all you really did was growl and roar," 

"I see...name eh? Can't really remember," the girl said calmly. 

"Can't remember?" 

"Yes, I can't seem to remember a lot of things. Basically, everything about myself beyond the fact I never wanted to be captured and experimented on to become this," she almost hissed at the last word. 

"Hmmm...but we gotta call you something..." 

The girl concentrated a bit more, in trying to remember in non-existent memories. Splintered words and voices, images too. All too jumbled to interpret in the slightest, with nearly no connection. 

"A tiger..." she whispered. 

Images flashed past her in a blur, but something that seemed so predominant. The orange fur and black stripes of a tiger, mixed with blurs of people running, roars, screams. She saw them, the tiger, and something else, something large, she couldn't tell what. 

"Run..." she whispered subconciously, Xan looked at her curiously. 

They were fighting, she saw blood flying, flying everywhere. And fire, a whole forest of fire. And she, floating away from all this. The tiger had won, had won somehow and the thing, the beast before, was now just a man, a man gore-flecked and mutilated, beyond recognition. But she could recognize him, he was... 

"Papa..." 

She was floating away. Away to somewhere dark and everything echoed, noises sometimes so loud and sometimes in deep silence. And then, 

"ARRRRRRRRGH!" she screamed out loud, and Xan screamed as well, jerking back the hand about to offer help. 

"Jeez! Stop screaming and roaring already!" he shouted, but gasped at the strange look in the girl's eyes. They were wide open, glazed over as in in a trance, and stared into nothing while shaking in their sockets, moving back and forth with no direction. 

She was breathing heavily, her mouth agape and her arms shaking badly from shock and suppressed rage. 

'...operation...Dragonfire...no survivors...exceptional...last one...give...no...ultimate...record...' meaningless words collected together violently within an already troubled mind, one which could no longer take the pain that she remembered. The only she could remember, pain, pain and more pain. Pain she could not stop, could not control, and yet, could not yield. She slept in pain, woke in pain, given pain that always got worse, pain that grew, pain that lived only to torture her, to only stop when she herself was dead. 

'...deletion...noone cares...name?...unimportant...' 

"No..." she groaned through the haze, she shut her eyes tight and pressed her hands to her ears to keep out the voices. 

'...unimportant...prepare...' 

"...I'm...I'm..." she continued, crushing her ears into her head as the voices seemed to grow louder and louder. 

'...noone...will...remember...' 

"Noone...noone will remember, you're a memory lost now," she said in a gentle voice just louder than a whisper. 

Xan looked up at her voice, his heart still beating with quicken pace from his previous shock. 

"Noone will remember your family, your home, your name," she said in a detached tone, one which was too calm compared to the anguish on her face. 

"Noone will remember you, Crimson, noone will remember you," her voice dissipated into a silence, as she slumped forward in exhaustion. 

The room was quiet for a while, Xan staggered and stood up, looking at the girl with renewed fear. Her face was darkly covered with her hair, and Xan was unsure whether she was awake or unconcious. Finally, a tired sigh from her gave him his answer. 

"That's what they told me before I was placed in the tube," the girl said, "Crimson...heh. They didn't even call me by my name, they thought it was 'unimportant'. But I remember what I was called before them," she said, being quiet again. 

'Say your name,' it was a firm voice, firm yet unthreatening. 

"My name..." 

'Don't let go of it, use it when you survive,' the voice continued. 

"The last one..." she hissed. 

'Your home, your family, your father, are gone. Forget them, if you want to live. Remember yourself, you is all that matters,' 

"Ai...my name is Krislan," the girl said simply, as if in answer to the one who talked with her before. 

"What?" asked Xan, finally summing up the courage to speak to the literal live wire on his bed. 

"I said, my name is Krislan, my last name is unimportant," she repeated calmly. 

She looked up at the staring Xan, "Call me just Kris from now on, Krislan is no longer my name," 

"What?! But you just said..." 

"Krislan was the name given to me by those who are now dust and bones. Nothing is left for them to be remembered by, and that includes me, because I am not the one they once called Krislan. Kris is enough," 

"Okay okay, Kris then. That show was a lot for a name though," Xan commented. 

"Hmph, whatever. Would you be kind enough to tell your name?" 

"Oh, sorry. My full name's Alexander Brockett, but I hate that name, way too long," 

"At least we agree on something," 

"So, I like it better when people just call me Xander, or Xan," 

Kris nodded agreeably, "It's a good name," 

Xan was a bit surprised, "Really?" 

"It sounds good," 


	7. New Life

**Author's Notes:** It has come to my attention that my chapters have gotten progressively worse as I was writing. Therefore, I have planned to revamp my writing style, which would give better description, less dialouge, and more coherence. Right now, this is somewhat the last chapter for this Bloody Roar 2 storyline, and the first of the BR3 one or so. Look out for hopefully, better work in future, from me, in the next story arcs. Admittedly, I do not have much experience with BR3 and BR3 Primal Fury's storyline, therefore it might be a bit off. Hopefully, not too much. Well, read this, I've put more time into this, and more thought, so, enjoy. 

----------------------------------------------------

_After the destruction of the Tylon labs, an intelligience investigation was carried out in the deployal of the 'Search and Destroy' unit by the ZLF, who was found to be in affliation with Tylon. It was found that the ZLF's records were hacked in by an unidentified person, and several orders were sent to various factions to attack the Tylon laboratories. The person was never found, nor named. _

Similarly, the massacre that was carried out on the unit sent to the laboratories was never explained. Survivors' explanations of a great red dragon, who killed and burned over half their number, were never justified. The identity of the zoanthrope that the survivors and their believers deemed simply as 'Red Dragon', was never found. 

It was also after the destruction, the appointation of a Yugo Ohgami, as the new leader of a volunteer group of zoanthropes aimed for the global peace of all human and zoanthrope kind, also soon followed. The first order of business was to gather as much of the original ZLF members into their fold, much who were unaware of the Liberation Group's true intentions, nor that the laboratories were also under the control of their own leader, 'Alpha'. 

Among these volunteers, Alexander Brockett was quick to join, hoping to prove himself a true do-gooder in the eyes of the world. Many people who knew Xander, as he prefered to be called, said he was equal to Yugo's optimism and tenacity, though not as fanatic. Therefore, he was often dubbed as a 'poor-man's-wolf', which also applied to his Tylacine beast form. 

There was also the mysterious girl who was always close to him, but somehow distant. They only knew her as 'Kris', but not much else was known. Even her features were never clear, all was known was that she usually kept out of sight by day. And then, there were those who said, they have spotted her wrapped in thick cloaks, prowling in the night, leaping from the top of buildings and climbing up walls straight up with wild abandon. 

----------------------------------------------------

Night was a time that Kris was allowed those precious moments to go outside without interference. Be it from curious or overly-agressive company, or a certain annoying compatriot. She stayed in the same apartment as Xan did, but their relationship was not as one might perceive. The tension was there, she herself could feel it, which unfortunately, could not be said for Xan, clueless in his innocent friendship with her, he was willing to take care of her every whim with not the least bit suspicion nor question. 

In all frankness, Kris regarded Xander as an idiot. A clueless idiot who for the life of her, could not see that everyone else were not too keen having her around. Alienation did not seem to register in that moron's simple mind, which was why she had made some arrangements of her own. She could not care less for company of any sort, she was content to muse and linger about whereever she may be, alone and peaceful. Which she noted would not have worked for Xander, which was why she, in the closest thing anyone could call a 'caring gesture', she kept a wide berth from Xander if she ever did went out with him. A very wide berth, sometimes it was not enough to be in a seperate corridor, and she left the area completely. 

Alienation, she had solved that problem for Xander, though he assumed her distance from him was only because on her own solitary nature. Which, then again, was probably a correct asumption, she would never have walked anyway near him in the first place. The only thing that kept her 'here', in his company, was the fact she had a grudging problem of not having anywhere to go too, noone else to turn to, and of course, that nagging fact that he 'saved her'. 

Kris resumed her night vigil with the thoughts passing like a hollow wind through her mind. She stared out of the window, seating herself on the windowsill with a cat-like compactness. Her legs were drawn up to her chest, her hands laid lazily ontop of her knees, and her eyes glinted with a hint of hidden and restrained power. 

She had a large green cloak wrapped around her body, it was heavy, but soft and refine. A smaller, slightly darker cloth was wrapped around her face, now pulled down to reveal her set mouth. 

Exhaling softly, she stood up from the windowsill, and lifted the catch. She lifted the window pane, and set a bare, clawed foot on the open sill. She hated shoes. It effected her agility, and accuracy. At best, they were protection on hostile ground, but as she has not ever met ground that she felt painful enough, shoes could wait. 

She stuck her head out, and took a breath of the cool air outside, the cloth about her neck began to ripple like dreary leaves as a gentle gust blew by. She pulled up her other leg onto the sill, and there she perched, like a humanoid gargolye, spying on the mostly clear street below her. 

For a few moments, she stayed still. It was a full moon, its light shone on the irremovable golden rings on her fingers, the flesh now dried in place, and healing with new skin. 

Kris grimaced. She remembered how Xander, in his furtive attempt to 'ease her pain', had tried to pull out those rings despite her steadfast refusal. She had rewarded Xander's fruitless efforts with a nice slash across the hand. 

She regretted it now. She should have bit him instead. 

She laughed softly at the thought. Won't Xander be surprise to have a third set embedded with the other two marks. 

"Well," she said to herself, pulling up the cloth to cover the bottom half of her mouth. 

Her arms swung up, to grip the ledge above her. With graceful ease, she flipped herself upside down seemingly without the slightest effort. Her feet came to rest on the solid brick and cement of the building, her face now facing inwards at the blank white wall. A small, innocent worms it way into Kris' face. 

With a sharp but controlled force, the girl pushes off from her strange position, watching as the wall gets further and further away with her outwards freefall. She falls in an arc, clear away from the building. In mid-air, she flips her upper body and arms outwards beneath her, and stretches them out to greet the ground below as it silently climbs to meet her. But the meeting is not to be. Her hands soon feel the round and cool surface of the lamppost on the near opposite corner to the apartment block. 

With one smooth motion, she swings around and upwards like a gymnast, going straight up but flipping right side up again as her feet land gently and balance themselves on the thin platform. 

A small fanged smile was evident despite the cloth covering her face, her eyes glimmered with a mean mischievous glint, that showed the world the nature that permeated from her only by nightfall. Like her cloak, her jetblack mane rippled with the whispering wind, seeming to be talking to the forces at work with meaningful gestures and sweeping sighs. Her fringe was long as well, long enough to conceal those predatorial eyes from those around, with Kris' exceptional vision penetrating the darkness regardless. 

She strode confidently and casually on the extended arm of the lamppost, as if she was nothing more than taking a stroll. She walked inwards, to where the lamppost bends downwards to extend till the ground. At the bent, she makes a light leap that takes her to the side of a redbrick building, where she latches on easily by the nooks and crannies in the rough edge. 

With her body flat to the wall and her cloak whipping behind her, she makes her ascent, each clawed hand finding some new crevice for her to pull up to, her feet pushing her body upwards slowly. Such activity would be physically strenous for a normal person, but Kris found herself being quite at home, climbing straight up a building. Perhaps it was because of her tall and lanky size and artificially strengthened muscles, but a certain amount of skill was applied to wallclimbing nonetheless. 

She had done this before, this being yet another suppressed memory. She had to climb up a cavern as a test, a trial-by-fire so to speak, except it was a deep cavern where her...parents, placed her in, and made her scale to the top where they would welcome her with cheers and love again, like nothing had happen. By all accounts, nothing had happened, it was the way of her...people, and so, she went by it as did her ancestors before her. 

But, it was cruel, and tough. Death from falling, ostracization by failing or happiness and life for succeeding. Those were the results of the 'test'. 

So cruel... 

Alas, that was a memory, nothing that had to do with her now. Kris pushed it to the back of her mind, concealed it behind other painful memories that no longer held meaning to her, but mere fuel to back up her bid for a life that was aimless and meaningless. What would happen if that 'fuel' ran out, and those memories were revealed again? Kris did not venture to think that far, she would be happy if those memories burned away with the rest of them. 

The building was only about two or three stories, and Kris soon felted the weathered edge of the old buildings brick layered roof. With one pull from her powerful arms, Kris was up and over the edge and rolled onto the buildings silent and desolate grey roof. The roof access, those unnamed instruments that were part of some elaborate but standard ventilation system for the building, were all softly illuminated by the bright moon that shone, like the milky eye of some giant and unspoken beast. 

Kris faced up to this moon, her own ruby eyes piercing into the great orb, seeing perhaps more clearly than any human eye, the various deep rivers that wove in the moon, the light that was recycled from the greater fury of the sun some half a world away, the way the moon buoyed in the sky. 

"It is a nice night..." Kris whispered as she jumped a top of the roof access, staring intently at the moon, that drew her gaze and her mind with power but not overbearing, controlling but not tyrannical or restrictive. 

Kris felt some innate stirring within herself, in her spirit and in her mind, that almost irresistable urge, to just abandon all dignified humanity, all noble beastiality, to succumb to the mindless need to prey. 

Kris would resist, but only to a certain limit, one which she had reached countless times her past nightly adventures. The end was always the same, she would not fall to it, not to the mindless and reckless slaughter that urged her claws to find warm prey and made her jaws clenched in anticipation for the hunt. She was not going to lose herself, she had no purpose to live, her life was without a goal or support, but she was not going to be taken in by something so trivial and basic. 

No, she would not fall, she would accept, accept on the conditions she had control, and as she asserted that desire, so did it happen. She would stand with her body to the moon, her head reared to stand against its pale face, her black mane flitting behind her, her arms spread slightly apart, her claws stretched and primed, her scarlet eyes ablaze with inner predatorial spirit, her throat starting to rumble and shake with a growl, until at last, her jaws would open, all her frustration and pain concentrated into single roar, that sounded with that of countless other beasts and not. 

The roar began to thin, toning down to more human sounds, until at last Kris was once again silent, breathing deeply from the roar get required much effort from her. It was done, a kind of silent pact with the unnatural desire that rose from the combined influence of those rogue genes. The roar was merely to expel some part of the urge, perhaps she had a little wolf in her, that made her want to howl to the moon. Kris dismissed. That was a mindless stereotype that attributed to nothing this night. No, she knew why she roared. It was a warning, a warning to all those that would provoke tonight, and be unlucky enough to meet her once she left her perch tonight. 

"It is a nice night..." she whispered again, standing straight and tall once more, her face to the moon but with none of her initial, unsettled feelings. Her aura was one calm in her own power, her own control, her own being as it was. 

"On nights like this," Kris grinned widely under her fluttering dark green scarf. 

"I crave to hunt," she finished, laughing under her breath, her eyes filled with savage and quiet danger. 

Those days of past that Kris refused to see or acknowledge, that time when she had been subjected to the trial of climbing the cavern face, it was clear from the start, that Kris had not died from falling. But now, it was clear, that Kris had not failed either. 

________________________________________________________________________________

P.S. A little trivial, can you spot, in the opening italics, the stuff that some of the Bloody Roar characters did? Yugo is apparent, and so is Shenlong as 'Alpha'. The 'unidentified person' who hacked into the computer data files, was also none other than Jenny Bartory. These are all actual story facts that I gathered from playing the Story Mode, in Jenny's case, the fact she had hacked into the ZLF files but the rest I wrote, so they should not be wrong. 


	8. Humane

**Author's Notes Rant:** EVIL BEINGS! NO NEW REVIEWS! :p However, I WILL PREVAIL! I WILL WRITE! YES I WILL! AND DAMN THEY'LL GET BETTER THAN BEFORE! MWA HA! 

Note, I was just ranting my apparent frustration at having no reviews or readers -_- sigh, sadness. Please read and review, okay? I put A LOT of WORK into THIS Chapter, I swear it! 

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The smell of pork lard swirled in the air, paused to give Xan the feeling of having a nice oily strait jacket about him, before swirling about some more and flitting off somewhere else. The soft chatter of the patrons in the restuarant melded together into a clamour that was nothing shot of melodious. Most of the chatter was in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew and a variety of other dialects, with a miscellany of English, German, and sometimes French, that punctuated like little notes. 

Xan stood near the counter, looking in quiet wide-eyed curiousity at the inside of the Chinese restuarant. He was waiting for his take-away order to be finished, and he entertained himself with examining the slightly crowded resturant. Brown wood tables with red tablecloths draped over, smooth and cushioned chairs for customers. Some of the foreigners were eating steamboats, while the Chinese were majority just eating some rice or noodles and al carte dishes, not having the same feel of novelty of the steamboats as the foreigners did. 

It was about 7:45 pm, the last order was given, but the customers were happy to sit and talk away till it was closing time at 8:00 pm. Xan was not there to eat though, actually, he was just taking some take-away dinner for himself and Kris. The food her was good and fairly inexpensive, but the most important thing was that they had vegetarian dishes too. 

For reasons that Xan could not really understand, Kris insisted on eating vegetarian. Not that it was extremous, she still drank milk (on occasion, she wasn't a picky eater), eat eggs and stuff like that, but she refused to eat meat as a whole. Xan did try to worm the reason out of her before, but all she said was she had rather not eat meat as it was 'a potential danger to my health' as she said. Xan resigned it to the fact when Kris had grudging agreed to eat some steak he cooked once, and she hacked up something furious. Xan was rather reluctant to admit his own, um, particularly lacking culinary skill, but Kris had sworn off meat after that. 

She was nice, she said it wasn't his cooking, it tasted fine, but she just couldn't take it. Xan was a bit touched that she tried to dissuade him from blaming himself, it was...sweet, if he ventured to ever say that in her presence. A quick slash or bite was always looming for just such an instance. 

Nonetheless, he was willing to get what she wanted, as well as to never ever cook again, as long as he could get his own fare easily enough, which the Chinese restuarant graciously provided. Come in the last half-hour, get the left over and cold stuff, get a discount. Great bargain! 

Xan started to tap his toes nonchalantly, leaning against the counter. He liked the smells and sights all, but if that take-away didn't hurry up a bit, his blue denim jacket was going to get a permaneat water-proof coating. 

"Oh! Sorry, please, just wait a little longer!" said the young waitress apologetically as she rushed about giving bills, taking payments and clearing tables. She was the only one working in the restuarant, it seemed, and she was extremely flustered scooting about in a tight cheongsam. 

Suddenly, she stopped by at a table that was placed some distance away from the main hubbub. A lone man sat there, Chinese and a youthful 30 by his features, sporting a pair of round thin-rimmed glasses, and a long ponytail that reached down to the middle of his back. He was dressed in a plain white suit, with thick brown trimmings at the edge. It was oriental in style, with large gold buckles in the front in orderly rows and columns, that seemed to pin part of the shirt to the other in a fold. Two black bands with the Chinese character for 'Determination' and the character for 'Tiger', were tightly bound on the man's right and left wrist respectively. A brown cloth belt was tied around his waist, followed by a pair of matching white pants. All this gave him the look of a well-learned scholar in feudal China, coupled this with the stately yet gentile manner he was drinking his tea from a small Chinese cup set in his hands, and the illusion was complete. 

Amiably setting down the cup, he raised his hands once more to read a paper-bound Chinese book peacefully, sometimes giving a disapproving glance at overly rowdy patrons. 

The waitress arrived at this part of old China, the man looked up calmly, when the young women snapped at him, "Long! Ever thought of helping me a bit?" 

The man, Long, seemed to mentally consider it for a while, keeping a steady but non-threatening gaze on the woman, before replying, "To each his own, Lin Lei," and picking up his tea once more and sipping it quietly with closed eyes. Which was just as well, as Lin Lei shot him an angry glance, before huffing back to work. 

Xan watched this with amusement from his corner, before letting his mind wonder again. 

A high-pitched shriek shattered his wandering thoughts and brought him back frantically looking for the source of the scream. 

"Come on now, just a little kiss for a big tip, whaddya say?" the oafish man leered with a greasier air than the one already present. He had grabbed Lin Lei around the waist, his fat lips close to her disgusted face. 

"GET AWAY FROM ME YOU BASTARD!" she screamed, striking a fist powered by years of hard menial work straight across his face. 

"YARGH!" the man's head rolled back, his side throbbing from the punch. But the punch was not enough to push him away, and he tightened his grip into a deadly one. 

"YOU LITTLE BITCH!" the bull of man roared, raising a fat clenched fist. 

The rest of the patrons only stared with guilty complacency, refusing to go beyond the side lines, unwilling to help or even consider helping the distressed woman, with the helpless air of a worthless herd of sheep staring at a wolf devouring one of their number. 

Xan was not one of those sheeps though, maybe you could call him the sheep dog. He immediately rose from his resting position and started to clamber towards Lin Lei. But cluttered and closely placed chairs barred him from an easy passage, and Xan found himself falling and flailing about instead of running to the rescue as per plan. 

*Damn it!* he thought, hopping on one foot when he could not found enough place for his other. The customers were not even bothering to just move out of the way! 

Suddenly, the man swung his fist forward, much to Xan's horror. But there was a quick flurry and flash of white, and the man's fist was stopped. 

Long, with a piercing gaze and stern jaw, held his hand with open palm where Lin Lei's would have been, stopping the man's fist easily without so much as a wince. 

"What the ARGH!" shouted the man as Long crushed his hand with a powerful grip honed from years of training. 

The man immediately let go of Lin Lei, whimpering from the broken fingers and wrist in his hand. Long held out an arm and steadied Lin Lei as she fell. She was shaking a bit and Long gave her reassuring pat on her arm before pushing her behind him as he walked to the front of the crouching man. 

"I believe you should leave now," Long said steadily, without a hint of malice or threat. 

"My hand...damn you fucking little prick!" growled the man, his drunken fury now focused on the Chinese martial artist before him. 

He tried to grab Long's legs before him, but he easily lept up and over him. The man, clumsy and cumbersome, stood up with Long behind him. He tried to turn but found himself restricted as Long grabbed his arms and tripped him with his left foot. The man fell heavily on his back with a groan, and wanted to get up again when Long's foot plants itself hard on his neck. 

"I do not want to sully my hands on the likes of you anymore," Long's eyes were slitted with restrained anger, "Leave now, or I will be forced," he increased the pressure on the man's neck, choking his air supply to his already small brain, "To dirty my feet as well," 

The man, red in face, almost turning purple, desperately nodded. Long slowly lifted his foot off the man, and he sat up, spluttering and choking. He pushed himself and yelling a quick insult, dashed for the door. 

This time, the customers move out of the way, noting that would be in their best interests, thus also freeing Xan from his red cushion and wood prison. As the man was about to run past him, a sudden thought reminded him of something, and he stuck out his foot. 

With yet another crash, the man fell facefirst on the floor, and Xan said matter-of-factedly, "Hey buddy, you haven't the pay the bill yet, have ya/" 

"YOU BLOODY PUNK!" yelled the man as he stood up, flustering and raging red, having forgotten his previous promise of exiting the premises immediately. 

However, the sight of a glaring Long, creaking his neck and fingers coming up from behind, quickly reminded him of that. 

"I have forgotten that as well. Thank you, young man," Long said, walking up to stand next to Xan. 

The man crumpled into a frightened heap under Long's scrutinizing gaze. He pulled up a grimy brown wallet from his pocket and grabbed all the notes he had in it, and threw it on the ground before scampering straight for the door and bursting through it to the dark street beyond. 

Someone amongst the astounded customers started to clap slowly, then gradually joined by the others as they were awaken from their silent stupor. Long glared over his shoulder at those behind him with a disapproving eye, and they were silent once more. 

Turning to Xan, he bowed slightly, "Thank you for trying to help," 

Xan grinned cheerfully, "Heh, it was the least I could do, really! You did most the work anyway," 

"Perhaps," Long said with a sigh as he walked back to Lin Lei, who was sitting in a vacant seat, still trembling slightly. 

The groan of chairs moving showed that many of the customers had lost their appetite. Lin Lei immediately got up, some tears still flowing form her eyes, when Long placed a firm hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. 

"You were right Lin Lei, I should help around here more often," he said quietly, "Take a rest first, I will collect the bills," 

Lin Lei sniffed a bit, before nodding in affirmation. Long walked calmly behind the counter, and being to take into account the orders and such of the customers. He then noted that Xan was standing near the counter, and looked up questioningly. 

"I'm sorry, but are you waiting for something?" 

"Oh! Yeah, well, I guessed the lady kinda forgot about...well, yeah," 

A quick glance at Long, and Xan could see he was slowly being irritated, though being very quiet and friendly about it. 

"I was ordering take-away," Xan said quickly. 

Long nodded, seaved through the order slips, and found the only one for take-away, "'Xan', am I correct?" Long asked, noting the name scribbled on the slip in case identification was needed. 

"Yeah, that's right," Xan replied. 

Long walked out through the swinging door of the counter, and disappeared behind a screen door with oriental designs of mandarin ducks and water lillies as he went into the kitchen. While waiting, Xan quickly fumbled for his own wallet and got the payment ready. A few minutes later, he returned to the counter, with Xan's order neatly placed in boxes and a plastic bag. 

"Thanks," Xan said as he took the take-away and gave the paid Long the exact amount. 

"Please come again soon," Long said politely as Xan nodded and left through the door of the restuarant. 

Xan walked back in the dusky gloom of the night, lit only by grim streetlamps and some bright neon lights of shady establishments, and some not he supposed. 

"That guy was pretty cool," he mumbled to himself, swinging the plastic bag absentmindedly. 

Just a couple of blocks more, and in five minutes he'll be home. Well, home was really on another continent, but he would never really return there anymore, maybe at Christmas, just to see the old place again. Not that he had family there, anywhere, anymore. 

Xan just let those thoughts drift away with the midnight chill, and felt inside his pocket for the key, early preparation for the door. He wondered whether Kris would be back early tonight, usually she might stay out for hours on end, only coming back by the early hours, and that meant he was usually already asleep. 

It suddenly occurred to him how cat-like Kris was, totally indepedant despite living with someone else, likes to go out at night, finicky with her food. 

Xan touched his right arm, the one which had payed the most with his association with Kris, it had two scars from previous punctures made by Kris' bites. And his right hand still had the scabs from her latest 'attack' on him. 

Xan groaned from those moments of pain. Yup, acts exactly like a cat too. 

"Now all she needs is a cat beast form," he mused as he continued to walk on into the night. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In a second of a second, a brief flash of a figure, darts across the small gap between two buildings. It lands firmly on its palms, before letting its legs land behind it, and push it forward in a leap. 

Kris cloaks swirled around her body once more as she made another leap on an adjacent building. To anyone who happened to see her, she must have been quite a sight, some lone vigilante like in comic books? 

Not really, Kris made it a point to expel whatever restlessness she had on those she found annoying, stupid, and utterly undeserving of a 'timely death' as it would be put. 

Xan happened to be an exception. 

She was hunting, although perhaps more like prowling. She had no particular target, and she had no reason to believe she would find one. More often than not, she went back with clean hands. Of course, if she did find a suitable target, she would make sure to go back very late, realising Xan would probably have a fit if he knew she was busy fighting on her nightly outgoings. 

A leap...another leap...stop, turn around and sniff...another leap... 

Targets had been scarace to say the least, she tried not to indulge herself in it too much. She liked to fight, but not particularly loving it. She made a mental note before though, that anyone in her way, looking for a fight, should be prepared to be killed if she let herself to. 

So far, noone had pushed her to that extent, and the better part of her nature hoped that that would continue for a good time, but she was ready to start if needed. 

"Hmm..." she murmured as her unusually sharp ears caught the sound of distressed man, coming from the alley just below her next jumping point. 

"Perhaps this will not be a boring night after all," she said to herself, looking down with increased vision. 

At least the perpetrators who experimented on her, had done a good job on her senses. 

Kris saw the unmistakble hulking forms of three lowlife thugs, who had cornered a modestly dressed man in the alley, with the usual assortment of sharp weapons, a gun, and bully talk. The man had pressed himself in a corner, and whimpered as he tried to fulfill their demands of cash or life. 

Kris snorted, she had hoped for better prey, instead of some pathetic lot, all four of them. She silently started down the wall, climbing down a short distance before reaching the fire escape, and proceeded to slink her way down by dropping on all fours and flattened herself to the metal surface. 

The action was heating up, the thugs had proceeded to increase their sadistic enjoyment by terrorizing the man with tosses and crushing his glasses. Kris slipped over the edge of the fire escape, and proceed to climb down one more storey from the outside, before leaping down and landing lightly on her feet. 

It was the cornered man who saw her first, perhaps thinking he had finally gotten his wishes for a saviour. In a way, he was right, but that was still up to Kris. 

"Enjoying yourselves?" she slurred in a bored tone, crossing her arms in mock defiance. 

"What the? Some kid?" muttered one of the thugs stupidly, turning around at the perceived new target. 

"Outta looking for some trouble, ain't he!" growled a more furious member of the dastardly trio. 

"He? I beg your pardon, but the last time I checked, I was of the opposite gender thank you very much," Kris said, in a snide laughing tone, that served only to increase her intended opponents' ill moods. 

"We'll teach you a lesson on snooping, punk!" grinned the more daring man, who started to rub his fists in glee. 

"You take pain for pleasure? You disgust me," Kris drawled, kicking a can absent-mindedly. 

There were no more words exchanged, but for the mindless guffawing of the three men, thinking they had cornered their prey. Actually, Kris was waiting for her prey to come to her jaws, so to speak. The first man charged, gnarled hands outstretched to grab Kris. Her eyes flashed to face the charging bullhead, arms instinctively poised in a defensive stnace, legs following suit. With acute precision and timing, Kris dodged the charge by leaping up over her adversary's head as he dipped down just enough to grab her. His hands closed on thin air, and he felt his head being crushed down as Kris pushed down on it like a vaulting horse. 

She leapfrogged over him easily, and a split second after landing on the otherside, she dodged a punch from a second. And another. And another. And another. 

Each dodge simply required a step back, forward, or to the side. It was very boring. 

"Can't you do better..." she drawled in a bored tone, once again dodging two punches from the same man. 

Suddenly, her ears pricked at the sound of a 'click' in the background. Kris realised she had made a fatal mistake. Where was the third one? 

In the gloom of the alley, Kris spotted the third member in the background, a fairly large handgun in hand, aiming at her with a sadistic grin plastered on his darkly shadowed face. 

The 'click' was soon followed by the thunderclap of a shot being sent through the mouth of the gun, and streaking through the air with invisible speed. 

The shot was quite accurate, might even have wounded Kris had she not noticed it in the first place. But, she had, and that made all the difference. She dodged both fists and bullet with a quick skirtle on the walls of the tight alley, able to run quickly enough on the walls, before kicking off hard like a ricocheting rubber ball. 

All at once, she felt a surge of adrenaline pumped through her body, her muscles tensing and boistering with unintentional power, all at once, she felt the deep and unfathomable rage that spurred her on, the moment the sting of the gunshot reached her ears. 

It was the guns. It was always the guns. She hated them, hated them, HATED THEM! They were used by only the weak, and with them they shot down the otherwise strong. Weaponry was for the weak, and she had no taste for the weak. In a mental groan and self-realisation, she realised she DID...tolerate...one such 'weak' person. Unfortunately for her, Xan just HAD to be trained in firearms. Trained very well in fact, too well. 

The guns, just mentioning them, would send her into an outburst of rage that she would never unleash in her right mind. Comment on weaponry of any kind would bring about scoffing comments and sharp criticism. As for any actual use of weaponry, well, let's just say that person had better pray, or grovel, whichever was fast enough to actually happen before she pounced at them. 

Tonight then, was no surprise to herself, really. It was bad enough she was stressed without any proper or even respectable opponent to pit herself against, it was worse that the three piteous ones had resorted to a gun to give them an edge. 

It was unforgivable. 

Her jaws had dropped open, baring her long and sharp-edged fangs in twilight. Her claws were stretched and arched into hooks, with her arms before her head as she pounced at her target. From those open jaws, a deep guttural growl rippled out, and was the only warning for the shocked man as he felt the force, and sudden searing pressure and lightness that followed as Kris bit down on his neck, her canines easily slashing through soft skin, fat and flesh to the windpipe within. Her claws at first gave her leverage on the man's shoulders, but were ripped free, leaving deep gashes, as she spun with momentum. Kris did not let go, and the man's neck was pulled by the powerful girl as her legs and body spun to the side, her feet reached the ground and she tossed the whole man behind her with her teeth still locked on his neck. 

Blood spurted in a thick shower from the man's ruptured throat. So mangled was it that spare flesh hang like leaves on the wind, whole strips were pulled apart or dangling from a thread. The man's eyes were wide open in pure terror and confusion, his mouth gaping like a dying fish as his felt his breath simply flitter back out again through the gaping hole. 

Bloody threads spun down from Kris' jaws, dribbling drop by drop from her clenched jaws in the dark light. 

The other two men, could only gape in horror that matched the dying one's, and they retreated in disgust as their comrade reached out with feeble hands for help. 

"You weaklings..." Kris snarled, her black mane whipping about her, her red eyes flashing and her ivory white teeth glimmering with those roads of red. 

"Pathetic weaklings..." she snorted as the men tried to run. 

She fell on all fours and bounded after them easily, her cloaks and mane masked her body and she became a gigantic wide beast, chasing weakened and frightened prey. 

"Did you really think a 'gun' would stop me?!" she exclaims in fury as she catches up with one of the men, stood again and drew back her right arm, plunging it forward with deadly accuracy straight through the back of the neck, her sharp and long talons cutting easily through spine and throat to have the sharp points poking on the otherside. 

"WEAKLINGS!" she roared as she withdraws her bloodied claws. Standing behind the dead man's body, the blood from the wound on his neck splashed down on her face and black hair, its thick stickiness clotting her hair and annoying her hairs. 

As the man topples lifeless to the ground, she turns to the third and last one, who was now some distance away from her, nearly in the middle of of the deserted main road. She snarls savagely, her feralness manifesting itself to the fullest then. She easily covered the distance between them in little less than two bounds, and she pounced on the back of the last, her jaws flashing as she latches down hard on his throat with her fangs, cutting short the strangled scream that was about to escape. Her claws dig into the thick and sinewy flesh of the man's arms as she chokes him death, increasing the pressure till the man's eyes are flooded with a backwash of blood and his head slumps and lolls with wild abandon once Kris cracked his neck. 

Kris refuses to let go of her hold, even as the the dead man falls front first to the ground with a dull thud. Her jaws were still immersed deep in his bleeding neck, her claws still gripping the dead meat in frozen tension. Her breath comes in heaves, sending blood spattering as her sharp breath pushes through the bloody mess in her jaws. Her eyes were wide alert, her ruby pupils fully dilated and giving her unprecendented clarity of her surroundings. Her ears were pricked to the slightest sound, their acuteness almost deafening to her. Her body was livid with still raging power and rampant aggression, the hair on her back were poised up in a frazzled arch. Her tongue flicked subconciously, and she felt the metallic taste of blood in her throat, they had sneaked into her mouth when she did not bother to spit them out. 

She was ready, but for what? Her mind was in disarray, and the question begged whatever bit of rationality she had left, to answer this question. Her whole body was primed for something, it was there, she felt it deep in her guts, that she had to do something. 

Suddenly, the answers were all to clear to her. She had made a kill, three in fact, the alley beckoned her to drag this last one into its dark depths to join the first two. Then...then... 

She was to feed. 

BANG! 

Kris let go of the slumping neck, it fell to the ground with a squelch as it was finally released. She screamed in pain and whirled about, her claws ripping through uninhibited from the hold of the flesh. Immediately, she felt a flush of pain in her left arm. She groaned and held over the fresh wound, snarling beneath her breath at this atrocity. 

The bullet had dug itself a home in the flesh between her shoulder blade and arm joint. It was bleeding profusely, going right through the thick cloaks wound around her neck, spreading like dark tendrils to cover an increasing larger area. 

She glared into the dark alley behind her, and heard the shallow whimpering and gibbering of the previously threatened man. In the dark, her increased clarity revealed the man had managed to leave his weak position of fear, and grab the gun from the dead grip of the first thug. He held it shakily, his face white with terror as he saw Kris staring at him with anger and rage from his shot. 

"M...m...monster!" he managed to gasp, his hands shaking and fumbling with the gun. 

Kris almost laughed. Despite the extreme pain in her arm, she stood up to her full height, and strode confidently back into the alley. The man, apparently believing Kris was about to rip his neck out, cried out in fright and dropped the gun altogether. Kris snuffed at this show of cowardice, and resigned to the fact that the man probably shot her accidentally, considering he could not have possibly gathered the wits to aim and shoot. 

"So, it's alright to shoot if it's not human, eh?" she slurred lazily, looking down at the man with her mouth concealed as she pulled up her dark stained cloak to her face. All she got was a terrified mix of wail and 'eek!' in reply. 

She could not be further bothered with the man, she was more concerned on getting away from here. She winced as she jumped up to reach the lower end of a ladder from a fire escape, feeling the stretching pain of the severed muscle in her shoulder. She pulled herself up, and began a quick ascent to the top of the building. The gunshot would probably attract unwanted attention, not to mention the dead man clear in the lights of the streetlamps, was bound to be spotted by a passing car sooner or later. 

Reaching the top, Kris pulled down her cloak to get a good whiff of the air. The smell of alley, mingled with the stink and spilled blood of the thugs, was disgusting to her sensitive sense of smelling. The air, perhaps not as fresh as one would like, was still a welcome refresher. 

Kris' clawed hands dripped with thin streams of blood, and her mouth in the gloomy light of the moon, was dark with red blood smeared and drying on her jaws. Kris did not lick even the blood on her lips off, that was a bit much, almost cannibalistic if you want to get technical about it. Then, she remembered how she had felt while still lost in a feral rage. She had indeed, almost, intended to eat the man. Or did she? There was no doubt in her mind that she had intended to cause further mayhem on teh corpses of the unfortunates, but had she truly wanted to feast on their flesh? She had never experience something quite like that before, she was usually just plain angry and furious, wanting to only hurt and kill, but to actually eat? 

That could be explained by a simple hunger. She had not eaten her dinner yet, and perhaps that caused her to lose more control than usual. 

She doubt she would have really ate the man, the idea was stomach turning at it was. The three thugs could not have bathed more than five days ago and the rancid smell that hung around them as a whole would discouraged her from close combat with them if she had not been bored. 

In fact, she well might have left them alone, and alive, after a bit of brawling, if only they had not shot her. 

Kris growled. They paid the price for that indecency, even the cowardly one was given the ability to wound with that damnable contraption. 

She hate guns. 

Kris finally sighed. She was visibly a mess, blood-soaked from cloak to hair. If she did not reach home before Xan, there would be a certain amount of trouble to spring up, that Kris would rather avoid. The gun wound would be impossible to prevent Xan drom detecting, she would simply have to say she was shot were transversing some buildings, having been mistaken for a thief. 

The pain in her shoulder had reduced to a dull throbbing, that would awaken with a vengence if she moved too much. It was unavoidable though, if she wanted to quickly make her way back to the apartment. She gritted her teeth, and drew in her left arm as much as possible, trying not to swing it about too much. She dashed across the roof quickly, and began leaping from one ledge to another as she made her way back. 

-------------------------------------------------------

Stepping lightly on the opened ledge, Kris peered into the empty apartment discreetly, sniffed about for a while, than let herself in silently. She closed the window, and flipped the catch though there was really no need with her around. Xan had often argued that leaving the window open was just begging for thieves to get in, but Kris had never really cared. There was nothing of value in the house anyway. 

She sighed despite herself, home was still a familiar place, and noone was any happier than being somewhere they felt secure. That was how she felt as well. 

She pulled off her many cloaks quickly, and bound them such that the bloodied ones were hidden within the others. She went to the kitchen, and tossed them down the laundry chute. The Zoanthrope NGO organization were pretty thoughtful in providing for their members, figuring they would be better off helping ensure peace than doing laundry. Kris just hoped that the cleaners on duty would not ask too many questions, even better if they were lazya and just threw her cloaks with the rest of the pile without bothering to check. 

Kris went into the single bedroom, and into the bathroom. She turned on the heater, and the shower as well, dousing her head and face with gradually warming water. The blook thinned into red swirls in the water, flowing down in the drain without a trace. Her hair was a bit harder, it was thick and she had the sickening feeling that the blood might have flowed deeper into it than she could reach. Well, it would have to do just then, she thought as she rinsed her hands, then the bathroom floor off of residue blood, grabbed her towel and dried herself off. 

She felt better. Xan would never know, well, except for her wound. That, she would need some help with. She did not dare pull out the bullet just yet, though it would be fairly easy with her sharp claws, but she knew she would need someone else to help bind it or to put pressure on it, she alone could not possibly do both at the same time. 

She sat down on the couch and lay down on the soft headrest with a soft sigh. She felt tired, and if it were not for her wound, she would probably fall asleep right there and then. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment to relax, but was reawoken when familiar footsteps approached the door. 

Turning to face the door behind her, she heard the click of the key, and saw the turning of the knob. Rays of light from the hallway filtered into the darker room, and Xan stepped into his home with one of his hands grasping what Kris could smell, as food. 

"Oh, you're back early today," commented Xan as he turned on the lights and closed the door behind him. 

"Hm," Kris replied simply, eyeing the food out of the corner of her eye. 

"I need some help, Xan," she said as she stood up from her position of rest. Xan looked up in surprise, a request of assistance from Kris was very rare. 

Turning to face him with a bored expression, Xan's eyes widened at the bloody hole in her arm. Kris wore a short sleeved shirt underneath all her cloaks, and some long pants of his as well. The entire left side of the shirt was almost totally soaked in blood, and Kris glanced at it with a sidewise and contemptous look before facing Xan again. 

"What happened?!" he exclaimed, dropping the food bag on the counter and quickly going up to Kris. He stood slightly taller than Kris, and he looked down at the wound with a look of twisted fear. 

"Someone thought I was a thief on the roof, and shot me," Kris said the lines perfectly, and Xan expectingly, accepted them without the least suspicion. 

"I knew that you were going to get hurt one day!" he half-yelled in slight exasperation as he inspected the wound with Kris rolling her eyes at his apparent, motherly attitude. 

After grimacing with the final inspection of the wound, Xan went behind the kitchen counter, opened a drawer there, and took out his First Aid kit. Then, he scooted into the only bathroom and grabbed all the towels there, not noticing one being damp. 

Kris was sitting down on the couch, and Xan set the kit on the low table, and braced the towels in his hands. When he was suddenly struck with a thought. 

"How are we going to get the bullet out?" 

Kris pointed at herself, and then pulled down the left sleeve enough to reveal the wound. Xan grimaced once more when he saw the dark red and scarred flesh. Kris had faster regenerative ability then other zoanthropes, that much Xan found out when she was caught in a fight once. Apparently, she could regenerate to an extent even in human form. 

The blood had clot, but the bullet prevented the healing to go much further than that. 

"Get ready," Kris warned Xan, as she raised her right hand with claws at ready. 

Xan almost closed his eyes in imagined pain as he saw Kris dig to of her fingers into the wound, he heard all too clearly, the sound of shifting flesh, and heard Kris grunt in pain as she gripped the bullet, and pulled it out with one swift movement. The wound, having been disturbed, started to bleed again and Xan immediately lunged at it with a towel in hand, applying as much pressure as he could. 

Kris allowed herself to be pinned to the chair as they waited for the blood to naturally clot, Kris was hardly bothered beyond a clenched jaw from the stinging pain, but Xan looked as if he were trying to save a dying person with a fatal wound. Kris could tell him outright that it was little more than a flesh wound, but she did not say a word until she felt that the bleeding had stop, and her arm no longer pained her. 

With a bit fear, Xan lessened the pressure. Seeing no more blood, he slowly pulled away, the fibers of the towel sticking to and around the wound from the blood. The wound was not a pretty sight, but it had more or less closed with a weak scabby lining of plasma. Kris lay motionless, knowing a bit of movement might rupture it again. 

Xan opened the kit and got out what he needed, and begin to medicate the wound very carefully, giving concerned warnings to Kris about not being able to leave the house for at least one or two more nights. If Kris could, she would have shrugged, but she just accepted those words with slight nods. 

Leaning back in thought as Xan begin to bind the shoulder with layer upon layer of cloth, Kris thought about being shot, and asked him offhandedly, "Can you shoot something because it's 'not human'?" 

Xan looked up at this unexpected question, thought for a moment, then went back to his work and replied with a smile, "No way, then you're 'not human' yourself for doing that," 

Kris smiled too but Xan was too busy binding another layer to see. 


End file.
